Caught

Caught (1949) is Max Ophüls' elegant film noir, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Leonora Eames dreamed of the good life and very nearly grabbed it — a poor department-store model who marries the millionaire Smith Ohlrig. The fairy-tale wedding turns out to be a cage.

Behind Ohlrig's polished surface sits a jealous man prone to rages and obsessive control. Robert Ryan plays him as someone who treats his wife as one more acquisition. Leonora, played by Barbara Bel Geddes, flees the gilded mansion and takes a job at a struggling clinic on the poor side of New York, where she meets the neighborhood doctor Larry Quinada — James Mason, quiet and decent. The trouble is that Ohlrig won't grant a divorce, and a pregnancy chains her to him all over again.

Ophüls glides his camera through every room, making the rich man's house feel like a beautiful prison and the cramped doctor's office the only place anyone can breathe. A delicate woman's noir for viewers who like melodrama with a cold thread of dread under the glamour. Stream Caught (1949) online on iFILM.