Caught is a 1949 American melodrama[3] and film noir directed by Max Ophüls, and starring James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes and Robert Ryan.

Charm school graduate and model Leonora Eames, who has always dreamed of being rich, foolishly marries a deranged multimillionaire named Smith Ohlrig.

After the marriage, Ohlrig abuses Eames: mentally, by isolating her, criticizing her, exhibiting furious, unjustified jealousy, and expecting her to stay up late to be available when he comes home.

Penniless, Leonora leaves Ohlrig and finds work with an obstetrician, Dr. Hoffman, and a pediatrician, Dr. Larry Quinada, who have a partnership in a poor neighborhood.

Excerpts from gossip columns from April to October follow the course of Leonora's pregnancy and the rumors of her husband's mistreatment of her.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it "a very low-grade dime-store romance, expensively rendered on film".

[4] Variety wrote although the performances are topnotch, the story fails to lift it above romantic pulp fiction.

[5] Harrison's Reports wrote: "Handsome production values have been wasted on a complicated, unpleasant story that is a curious hodge-podge of romance and psychological melodrama ...

"[6] John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote that while the main cast were all "first rate actors," none of their roles were "worth a moment's envy," because "the script presents us with a full quota of standard Hollywood paper-backed characters, who move around, for the most part, against stage sets about as stimulating as scenes drawn in soap on a barroom mirror.

[8] In modern reviews, J. Hoberman of The New York Times wrote, "The filmmaking is brilliant in part because, like Bel Geddes's deceptively modest performance, it is so apparently unassuming.

"[9] Anthony Lane of The New Yorker called it a masterwork and wrote that Ohlrig is "a barely concealed portrait of Howard Hughes".

[11] Chuck Bowen of Slant Magazine wrote that it is not as good as Ophüls' later masterpieces, but it "offers a damning portrait of middle-class American society as a large and merciless snare.