Cat People (1942 film)

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Cat People is a 1942 horror film which tells the story of a young Serbian woman, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) who is haunted by the myth of the cat people of her village. Kent Smith portrayed her husband Oliver Reed, Tom Conway played psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd and Jane Randolph was Alice, Oliver's colleague.

The movie was produced by Val Lewton. The writing is credited to DeWitt Bodeen, but Tourneur, Roy Webb, Lewton and his secretary all contributed to the script. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur, and the cinematographer was Tourneur's sometime collaborator Nicholas Musuraca. It was followed by a sequel, The Curse of the Cat People, in 1944.

A remake using the same title was made in 1982. The later Cat People was directed by Paul Schrader and starred Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, and John Heard.

In 1993, Cat People was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Synopsis

The film begins at a city zoo, where a Serbian-born fashion designer, Irena Dubrovna, stands in front of the panther's cage, apparently trying to make a sketch of it. She catches the attention of an American naval construction designer, Oliver Reed, when she balls up a draft of the sketch and tries to throw it in a trash bin, with no success. The two then become enveloped in a conversation, with Irena eventually agreeing to taking him her apartment for lunch. As they walk away, once of Irena's botched drafts blows in the wind, and is revealed to show a panther impaled by a sword.

At Irena's apartment, Oliver admires a statue in her possession of a crowned medieval figure on horseback impaling a cat with his sword. Irena tells Oliver that the figure is the (fictional) King John of Serbia. She proceeds to tell Oliver the legend behind the statue, telling him about how a Satanic tribe invaded her childhood village during King John's reign. Under the tribe's control, the people of the village were transformed into debaucherous devil-worshippers. When King John drove the evil tribe out of the village and saw what the villagers had become, he ordered them all killed. However, "the wisest and the most wicked" of them escaped.

As the plot unfolds it becomes clear that Irena believes herself to be descended from the evil tribe, and that she fears that she will be transformed into a panther if aroused to passion, anger, or jealousy.

Critical Overview

The film is notable for frightening audiences through the suggestion of unseen horrors with cast shadows and ambiguous sound effects, specifically in the celebrated swimming pool sequence. The panther remains unseen until the final scenes of the film, although Simone Simon displays increasingly catlike behavior and the viewer is bombarded by images of cats in paintings and statues. The final, extremely brief view of Irena transforming into a black panther and attacking Judd was included over the objections of the director, who wanted to keep the entire concept as mysterious as possible.

Although Cat People is usually categorized as a horror movie, many film critics also consider it a film noir, as Irena assumes many of the traits of both femme fatale and the typical noir hero alienated from conventional society, psychologically wounded and morally ambiguous.

Production details

The film was shot with a budget of under $140,000. Sets left over from previous, higher-budgeted RKO productions—notably the staircase from The Magnificent Ambersons—were utilized.

Lewton and his production team claim credit for inventing the popular horror film technique called the "bus". The term came from the scene where Irena is walking behind Alice; the audience expects Irena to turn into a panther at any moment and attack her. At the most tense point, when the camera focuses on Alice's confused and terrified face, the silence is shattered by what sounds like a hissing panther—but it is a bus pulling over to pick her up. After the excitement dies down, the audience is left uncertain whether anything supernatural or life-threatening actually happened. This technique has been adapted into a great many horror movies since then. Anytime a movie creates a scene where the tension rises and dissipates into nothing at all, merely an empty boo!, it is a "bus".

Reception

Reviews of the film were mixed when the film was first released. Variety magazine called Cat People a "weird drama of thrill-chill caliber" while Bosley Crowther writing for the New York Times commented that "The Cat People is a labored and obvious attempt to induce shock."

Today, the film still has a cult following. TV Guide's review of the film praised the film's cast:

Superbly acted (with Simon evoking both pity and chills), Cat People testifies to the power of suggestion and the priority of imagination over budget in the creation of great cinema. The film was Lewton's biggest hit, its viewers lured in by such bombastic advertising as "Kiss me and I'll claw you to death!"—a line more lurid than anything that ever appeared onscreen.

Prolific film critic Roger Ebert has included Cat People in his list of great movies As of February 6, 2008, the film holds a 94% Fresh rating on popular ratings website Rotten Tomatoes

This film was referenced in the novel Kiss of the Spider Woman by Argentine novelist Manuel Puig, in which two inmates pass the time by discussing the films one of them has seen. Though this movie is not mentioned by name, and some of the details are not recalled accurately, the parallels to the plot, the mention of Jane Randolph as one of the stars, and the protagonist's name being Irena clearly indicate that Puig was speaking about this film.

Notes

References

• Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD documentary 2005

External links

• Review of Cat People DVD at Blogcritics

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Last updated on Friday February 22, 2008 at 00:48:24 PST (GMT -0800)
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