By Will Ross
If anything sets the two versions of Cape Fear apart from other mass-market Hollywood films, it’s their commitment to dismantling the American nuclear family man. Just as their ex-con villain, Max Cady, wishes to destroy the life of the lawyer he deems as responsible for his incarceration (as a witness in the 1962 version and as his defense lawyer in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake), the two films tear the notion of the American dream to pieces by forcing a upstanding, wealthy man to act outside the law.
That man, Sam Bowden, is a bore in both films. In the original, Gregory Peck plays Bowden with utter ethical conviction. Without stepping outside the bounds of the law, Cady (Robert Mitchum) stalks and terrorizes Bowden with the implied threat of raping his wife and teenage daughter. The irony is that Bowden is equally amoral and calculating, if not as despicable. He abuses every method the police can use to force Cady out of town, and when that fails he moves onto hiring thugs to beat him, then to a planned “self-defense” murder with chilly logic. The implication is that both men are fanatically devoted to protecting their lifestyles: When Bowden offers Cady $20,000 to get out of town, the ex-con quickly calculates the money per year of sentence — “Counselor, I don’t believe you’ve heard of the minimum wage act” — and tells Bowden that he, too, had a wife and child who left him after his conviction. When the lawyer finally has the chance to kill Cady, he takes sadistic vengeance, declaring that he intends to have his enemy locked up for a life of lost time.
If there is one key ingredient that sets Scorsese’s version apart, it’s this: Nick Nolte’s character is spineless. When his wife correctly suspects him of an affair, he refuses to take responsibility. He avoids talking tough to Cady until he has thugs hired to beat him. He most always chooses flight over fight. When Bowden gets the opportunity to kill Cady, he immediately takes it, not out of mercy but out of the thrill of finally being able to take a life with impunity. To compliment this, the vendetta of Robert De Niro’s Max Cady is not only motivated by vengeance, but by his justly felt sense of righteousness: In his trial, Bowden deliberately buried evidence that would have led to Cady’s acquittal. He rightly points out that Sam has betrayed his family, his ideals, and his fellow man, and seeks to punish him for it.
There is a final wink by Scorsese, a bringing together of both films in the casting: Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum have cameo roles. Mitchum plays a police chief who unethically insinuates that Bowden should take the law into his own hands and kill Max Cady. Even more intriguingly, Gregory Peck plays a vain lawyer representing Cady who hyperbolically denounces Bowden, even though he has been reliably informed that Cady is a psychotic. Scorsese’s reversal of allegiances drives home the films’ jointly drawn, nihilistic conclusion: pretty much everyone is a hypocrite. People will make great showings of honesty and principle until their lifestyle is threatened. After that, all bets are off.
