According to The Guardian this was originally released in the UK after 161 censorship cuts.* It remains strong stuff, particularly because of the sexual violence of the Mitchum character, evident in John D MacDonald's original 1957 novel 'The Executioners'. And also interesting in that the liberal lawyer has to become something more primitive to defend his family from a psychotic presence. The ending, in which Peck doesn't kill him, rather send him back to prison for the rest of his life, was a good improvement on the original (screenplay James R Webb, also Cheyenne Autumn, Trapeze, Apache). (As an aside here, where Savalas is trying to convince the abused drifter girl to give evidence, he says Cady will go to prison for six months - I don't think so. For one thing he's on parole, and would be guilty of a similar crime that got him eight years in prison. It would be much longer. Also I'm not sure what 'lewd vagrancy' is but I wouldn't have thought that would preclude a couple from going into a hotel room.)
I wonder how long it took the wife - Polly Bergen - to forgive her husband for his insane plan?
Nicely lit by Sam Leavitt, a very distinctive score from Bernard Herrmann, and edited by Hitchcock regular George Tomasini. It's Universal, so Alexander Golitzen obviously credited for the production design (with Robert Boyle).
Robert Mitchum gives a great performance. (Just bought his biog 'Baby, I Don't Care'). In support of that, every time he appeared, Q would exclaim 'Go away!' Which is understandable, but it's a good job he didn't listen, otherwise there wouldn't have been much of a film.
With Martin Balsam, Lori Martin, Jack Kruschen, Barrie Chase (unfortunate drifter).
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| Lori Martin. "He's here. He's here." |
I seem to remember Scorsese's version being rather overwrought and not as good as this (and half an hour longer, I'll wager).
I was surprised to realise that Cape Fear is an actual place - I just thought it was a slightly melodramatic title - it's a promontory on North Carolina.
It was made by Peck's own Melville Productions.
* The BBFC were very helpful when I contacted them in listing the exact changes they required, which were:
'Reel 4 & 5 In the scene between Diane Taylor and Sievers remove all references which imply that she had suffered more than mere brutality, e.g .. "I'll show you photographs of girls who get mixed up with men like Cady. And, Miss Taylor, it'll make you sick" and her statement that she could never bring herself to tell anyone what he had done to her.
Reel 5 Reduce to a minimum the shots in which the camera concentrates on Nancy at the sailing club and remove Cady's reference to her as getting to be almost as juicy as Sam's wife.
Reel 6 Remove close shots of Cady approaching Nancy in car outside school and close shot of her watching him approach.
Reduce episode in which Nancy is frightened by a man in the school locker room.
Reel 7 Reduce to a minimum Cady's description of how he treated his ex-wife.
Remove "It 's Nancy he's after - and he'll get to her sooner or later unless I change his mind".
Remove the use of a chain as a weapon in the assault on Cady.
Remove all the dialogue (from "How could he even touch her...?" to "...we'd never put her through an ordeal like that") in which the parents discuss the question of Nancy's being called as a witness if she was assaulted.
Reel 8 Remove all dialogue beginning "Speaking about your wife and kid..." and ending "They ain't never gonna forget and neither will you, Counselor, never".
Remove "She? You can't be talking about Nancy".
Reel 10 Reduce the shots where the camera concentrates on Nancy whilst Cady is watching the house.
Reel 11 Considerably shorten Cady's attack on Peggy and her hysteria when Sam re-assures her.
Shorten the scene in which Cady advances on Nancy and she shows fear.'
You can see it would have been a much less powerful and disturbing experience after that lot of excisions.
P.S. a couple of weeks later I asked Q to do one of her sketches for it. Within a matter off seconds she came up with this:
You can see it as one of those avant-garde Polish film posters. It's rather cool.
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