The Cat and the Canary (1927 film)
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| The Cat and the Canary | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Paul Leni |
| Produced by | Paul Kohner |
| Written by | John Willard (play) Walter Anthony (titles) Alfred A. Cohn (adaptation) Robert F. Hill (adaptation) |
| Starring | Laura La Plante Creighton Hale Forrest Stanley |
| Music by | Hugo Reisenfeld |
| Cinematography | Gilbert Warrenton |
| Editing by | Martin G. Cohn |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | September 9, 1927 (USA) |
| Running time | 82 min |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Cat and the Canary is a 1927 American silent horror film directed by German expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. The film is an adaptation of John Willard's 1922 black comedy of the same name and stars Laura La Plante as Annabelle West, Forrest Stanley as Charles "Charlie" Wilder, and Creighton Hale as Paul Jones. Annabelle inherits her uncle's fortune, but when she spends the night in in his haunted mansion she is stalked by a mysterious figure. Meanwhile, a lunatic known as "the Cat" escapes from an asylum and hides in the mansion.
The Cat and the Canary is part of a genre of comedy horror films inspired by 1920s Broadway that includes Puritan Passions (1923), The Monster (1925), The Bat (1926), and The Gorilla (1927).[1] The film was one of the early Universal horror productions and is seen as "the cornerstone of Universal's school of horror."[2]
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[edit] Plot
In a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, millionaire Cyrus West approaches death. His greedy family descends upon him like "cats around a canary", causing him to become insane. West orders that his last will and testament remain locked in a safe and go unread until the twentieth anniversary of his death. As the appointed time arrives, West's lawyer—Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall)—discovers a second will has mysteriously appeared in the safe. The second will is only to be opened if the terms of the first will are not carried out. The maid and caretaker of the West mansion, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox), blames the manifestation of the second will on the ghost of Cyrus West, a notion that the astonished Crosby quickly rejects.
As midnight draws near, West's relatives arrive at the mansion: Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe), Charles "Charlie" Wilder, Aunt Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) and her daughter Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor), Paul Jones, and Annabelle West. Cyrus West's fortune is bequeathed to the most distant relative bearing the name West: Annabelle. The will, however, stipulates that she must first be judged sane by a doctor, Ira Lazar (Lucien Littlefield), to inherit the fortune. If she is deemed insane, the fortune is passed to the person named in the second will. The fortune includes the West diamonds which her uncle had hidden years ago. Annabelle realizes that she is now like her uncle, "in a cage surrounded by cats."
As the family prepares for dinner, a guard (George Siegmann) barges in and announces that a lunatic called the Cat has escaped and is either in the house or on the grounds. The guard tells Cecily, "He's a maniac who thinks he's a cat, and tears his victims like they were canaries!" Meanwhile, Crosby suspects someone in the family might try to harm Annabelle and decides to inform her of her successor. Before he speaks the person's name, a hand with long nails and covered in hair emerges from a secret passage in a bookshelf and pulls him in, terrifying Annabelle. The family immediately concludes that she is insane.
While Annabelle sleeps, the same mysterious hand emerges from the wall behind her bed and snatches the diamonds from her neck. Once again, her sanity is questioned, but as Harry and Annabelle search the room, they discover a hidden passage in the wall and the corpse of Roger Crosby. Mammy Pleasant leaves to call the police, while Harry searches for the guard; Susan runs away in hysterics and hitches a ride with a milkman (Joe Murphy). Paul and Annabelle return to her room to search for the missing envelope, and discover Crosby's body is now missing. Paul vanishes as the secret passage closes behind him. Wandering in the hidden passages, Paul is attacked by the Cat and left for dead. He gains consciousness in time to rescue Annabelle from the maniac. The police arrive and arrest the Cat, who turns out to be Charlie Wilder; the guard is his accomplice. Wilder is the person named in the second will, and hoped to drive Annabelle insane to receive the inheritance.
[edit] Production
The Cat and the Canary is the product of early 20th century German expressionism. According to art historian Joan Weinstein, expressionism is a loosely defined term that includes the art styles of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, cubism, futurism, and abstraction. The key element that connects these styles together was the concern for the expression of inner feelings over verisimilitude to nature.[3] Examples of German expressionist film include Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) about a deranged doctor and Paul Leni's Waxworks (1925) about a wax figure display at a fair.
Waxworks impressed Carl Laemmle, the German-born president of Universal Pictures. Laemmle was struck by Leni's departure from expressionism by the inclusion of humor.[4] In the United States, D. W. Griffith's One Exciting Night (1922) began a Gothic horror film trend that Laemmle wanted to capitalize on.[5] Other films in the genre like Puritan Passions, The Monster, and The Bat (1926) were adaptations of successful Broadway stage plays.[1] Laemmle turned to John Willard's popular play The Cat and the Canary and its story of an heiress whose family tries to drive her insane to steal her inheritance. Willard was hesitant to give Laemmle permission to film his play, as film historian Douglas Brode explains, "because that would have exposed to virtually everyone the trick ending, ... destroying the play's potential as an ongoing moneymaker."[6]
The sets of the film were designed by Leni and fabricated by Charles D. Hall, who designed the sets of Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931).[7]
[edit] Writing
[edit] Casting
Thomas Schatz: "second-rate cast"[8]
Deranged psychiatrist looks like Werner Krauss from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.[9]
[edit] Directing
Bernard F. Dick: "Leni reduced German expressionism, with its weird chiaroscuro, asymmetric sets, and excessive stylization, to a format compatible with American film practice."[10]
Dennis L. White: "is structured with an end other than horror in mind. Some scenes may acheive horror, and some characters dramatically experience horror, but for these films conventional clues and a logical explanation, at least an explanation plausible in hindsight, are usually crucial, and are of necessity their makers' first concern."[11]
sweeping hand and cobwebs, medicine bottles, cats, ghosts, clocks [12]
Jenn Dlugos: "many stage play movie adaptations fall into the trap of looking like 'a stage play taped for the big screen' with minimal emphasis on the environment and plenty of stageplay overacting"[13]
[edit] Reception
[edit] Criticism
Bernard F. Dick: "Exponents of Caligarisme, expressionism in the extreme ..., naturally thought Leni had vulgarized the conventions in The Cat and the Canary, yet all he did was lighten them so they could enter American cinema without the baggage of a movement that had spiraled out of control.[10]
Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice: "his adroitly atmospheric film is virtually an ideogram of narrative suspension and impact"[14]
[edit] Influence
Influenced film: The Old Dark House (1932), [15]
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 95, ISBN 0415026067.
- ^ Carlos Clarens, An Illustrated History of Horror and Science-Fiction Films: The Classic Era, 1895-1967 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), p. 56, ISBN 0306808005.
- ^ Joan Weinstein, The End of Expressionism: Art and the November Revolution in Germany, 1918-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 3, ISBN 0226890597.
- ^ Richard Peterson, liner notes, The Cat and the Canary (DVD, Image Entertainment, 2005).
- ^ Ian Conrich, "Before Sound: Universal, Silent Cinema, and the Last of the Horror Spectaculars," in The Horror Film, ed. Stephen Price, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p. 47, ISBN 0813533635.
- ^ Douglas Brode, Edge of Your Seat: The 100 Greatest Movie Thrillers (New York: Citadel Press, 2003), p. 32, ISBN 0806523824.
- ^ John T. Soister, Up from the Vault: Rare Thrillers of the 1920s and 1930s (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), p. 69, ISBN 0786417455.
- ^ Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Owl Books, 1996), p. 89, ISBN 0805046666.
- ^ Clarens, Illustrated History of Horror, p. 57.
- ^ a b Bernard F. Dick, City of Dreams: The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 56, ISBN 0813120160.
- ^ Dennis L. White, "The Poetics of Horror: More than Meets the Eye," Cinema Journal 10 (No. 2, Spring 1971): p. 5.
- ^ Richard Scheib, review of The Cat and the Canary, at The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review.
- ^ Jenn Dlugos, review of The Cat and the Canary DVD, at Classic-Horror.
- ^ Michael Atkinson, review of The Cat and the Canary DVD, The Vilage Voice (New York), March 3, 2005, available here.
- ^ Clarens, Illustrated History of Horror, p. 57.
