Caught is one of several films, mainly film noir, which take its heroes to a nightclub with black people. All of these films are made by liberals who wanted to help integrate the screen, and give more dignified roles to black people. However, if Caught is less innovative, its dance sequence comes from the same spirit of pro-Civil Rights activism. Here, the black musicians play as hero James Mason proposes to the heroine. They suggest that he is part of the great democratic masses of the people, not a member of the elite.
Few films are so playful with the boundary between illusion and artifice.
The narrator of the film talks directly to the camera, alters the events of the story, and does things that symbolically, not literally, depict the action. All of this is delightful. The freedom of La Ronde seems wonderful compared to the commercial control that is exercised over today's product. There, however, the structure is less explicitly avant-garde. Instead of a master of ceremonies, associated with the film, talking directly to the camera, we will have the circus' ringmaster, talking to the circus' audience.