Historically, Cape Fear comes at a transitional period in American Film making. Released in 1962, it came at the very tail end of the period of classic noirs. The 60s were late enough in film history that some directors were already beginning to subvert the genre, although as you might have guessed, most of those directors were not American. Over in France, Jean-Luc Godard was already loosing his aimless gangsters and girlish femme fatales onto the streets of France. But, this J. Lee Thompson film plays it straight. What results is a sort of atypical noir that is stylistically intricate in the vein of Cat People or Diabolique, with a sort of psycho-sexual bent.
