Cape Fear

The setting is an idealistic, 1950’s Middle America small town, as only Hollywood could portray. This is Sam Bowden’s hometown. He is a lawyer and pillar of the community. Enter Max Cady. He is an ex-con who was sent to prison based on Bowden’s testimony. Cady blames Bowden for his prison time and has returned to exact revenge. Not an uncommon theme, but what sets this movie apart from most other revenge pictures is the method Cady uses. He does not pick up a gun or burn down the house. He prefers a much slower, more painful method: Psychological torture. He just hangs around town, casually bumping into the Bowden family. The threat is there but Cady does not do anything overt, which could be prosecuted. This drives Bowden to extreme measures in order to deal with Cady.With Robert Mitchum as the bad guy, "Cape Fear" cannot help but be compared to Night of the Hunter. Night of the Hunter is a much better film. It has better direction, better cinematography, and still has the ability to scare. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is also evoked because of the casting Gregory Peck as the patriarchal lawyer. Unfortunately, the characters in "Cape Fear" are not as rich. I found the tone of the good guy and bad guy in "Cape Fear" similar to that of "Strangers on a Train." The audience is drawn to the bad guy because the good guy is so dull. Cady is fun to watch. I love the scene at the beginning where Cady passes a woman who drops a book. He doesn’t stop to help her. That says “bad guy” as loudly as if he had kicked a dog.

Though "Cape Fear" may be flawed, it is still an interesting psychological thriller. Bowden and Cady fight each other for control of the situation. The interesting balance of power through the legal system is expressed very well in the following essay by Leesa Sylski. http://www.usfca.edu/pj/capefearsword_sylyski.htm

She uses the terms tyrant and protector depending on what side of the scales of justice the characters are on. Bowden is a lawyer and believes in the law. He testifies against Cady because he believes the law will take care Cady and protect him. But Bowden is disappointed that the law released Cady unrepentant and unchanged. However, this is Bowden’s hometown so he thinks he can use the law to protect himself and be tyrannical to Cady. But Bowden steps over the line when he gets the police to arrest Cady as a penniless vagrant. It turns out that Cady is not penniless and therefore cannot be harassed. And so, the scales now tilt in favor of Cady. He now has the protection of the law on his side and he uses it to be tyrannical to Bowden. Bowden finds the law insufficient to deal with Cady so he keeps trying to find a solution outside of it. Yet every time Bowden does something outside the law, Cady calls him on it and Bowden is further punished by the law. At the end of the movie, Bowden runs away in defeat. Cady and Bowden must face each other without laws: “mano a mano”

In 1991, Martin Scorsese decided to remake "Cape Fear". While the final film was unsatisfactory, I find the ideas in the remake interesting when compared to the original film. Scorsese knew he could not make the 1960’s movie in the 1990’s. He is quoted as saying that if he had used a happy family then both him and the audience would be rooting for the bad guy. Instead of a unified nuclear family, the Bowdens are a fractured, emotionally damaged family trying to stay together. Sam Bowden tries to persuade them that they can beat Cady if they only join together. Unfortunately, he just does not have the commitment or authority to unify his family.

The opinion of the law has also changed from the original version. Bowden was Cady’s lawyer, and he intentionally lost the case because he did not believe the law would punish Cady. Instead of his idealism getting eroded during the movie, it is Bowden’s authority and manhood that get eroded. At the movies, Cady disturbs the Bowden family and the rest of the audience with his smoking and loud laughter. Afterwards, Bowden’s daughter expresses her disappointment in her father and implies that a real man would have punched out Cady. The seduction scenes of Bowden’s daughter and mistress also highlight his weakness. The women are drawn to Cady because he listens to them and talks straight. When Bowden finds out that Cady made an emotional connection with his daughter, he is further humiliated. At the end of the movie, when Bowden’s wife throws herself at Cady to save their daughter, Cady completes the hat trick and Bowden’s humiliation is complete.

That being said, the final movie looks like it has been 'doctored' to make it more like Fatal Attraction. Unlike the conservatively dressed Cady of the earlier movie, this Cady looks like a freak. He is this big hairy animal with a body covered with tattoos, and who looks like he can barely put two words together. Like Alex Forest, in "Fatal Attraction", Max Cady is totally dehumanized. He is a superman. He only gets a little dirty from a long rough journey hitched on the bottom of the Bowden’s car. In the final battle, Cady survives several deaths, ready to spring up and scare the audience. After the final death, Bowden washes the blood off his hands and Scorsese cannot resist one final scare; maybe Cady is not dead after all. Perhaps Cady is going to grab Bowden’s hands and drag him down to hell. That was tacky! The mano a mano fight of the earlier movie may have been unabashed and uninteresting masochism, but at least it wasn’t a cheap slasher movie ending like the remake.