Cape Fear (1962)

Saw Cape Fear (1962), starring Greggory Peck as another stalwart lawyer.  This came out the same year as To Kill a Mockingbird and his character is a stern, unimpeachable Atticus-like figure.  He's being bedeviled by a rapist he put in jail 8 years ago who is now showing up again to menace his lovely wife and daughter.  The film is sort of in the spirit of Death Wish or Batman: for the sake of peace and justice, the law must be taken into the hands of a grim, wealthy man.  It's a pretty gripping movie and has some nice tension and suspense, but it is also regressive.

The film was post code, so they could artfully allude to rape, but it was still quite unspeakable.  Many times the unspeakable nature of rape is used to eliminate possibilities.  An unrelated victim cannot be brought to testify because she cannot think of her parents reading about it in the papers.  The law can seemingly do nothing in the face of this silence.  I think that that same silence is re-enforced by the film itself being so coy about sexual assault.  If we can't even talk about it in a pretend-land, how can we deal with it in real life?  There's a rigidity and repression here that fuels the conflict.  Peck is a wealthy, untouchable lawyer being menaced by the scum of the streets.  If he were less freaked out by the whole thing, it would be easier.  If he and his wife could just laugh at or disapprove of this sad ex-con trying to menace them over the phone.  Then again, the villain is so supernaturally three steps ahead at all times.

The film is very Hitchcockian in its style.  Full of inky black shadows and brittle, stoically frightened dames.  It's not quite as good as Hitchcock however.  Also, the quiet menace of a clever, always just-out-of-sight villain serves to underscore the regressive elements inherent in the story.  Can no one really do anything?  Add to this the fact that the antagonist has an easy, frank, drawling demeanor which would become quite popular in the 70s (think of Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando's sloppy sex-appeal).  Against this slouching, libidinous threat is Peck's squared jaw and straight back, defending our women.