Cat People (1942 film)

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Cat People

theatrical poster
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Produced by Val Lewton
Written by DeWitt Bodeen
Starring Simone Simon
Kent Smith
Tom Conway
Music by Roy Webb
Cinematography Nicholas Musuraca
Editing by Mark Robson
Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures Inc.
Release date(s) December 6, 1942 (US)
Running time 73 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $134,000 (est.)
Gross revenue $4 million (world)
Followed by The Curse of the Cat People
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Cat People is a 1942 horror film produced by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur. The writing is credited to DeWitt Bodeen, but Tourneur, composer Roy Webb, Lewton and his secretary all contributed to the script. The cinematographer was Tourneur's sometime collaborator Nicholas Musuraca. The film stars Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Tom Conway.

Cat People was followed by a sequel, The Curse of the Cat People, in 1944. A remake directed by Paul Schrader and starring Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, and John Heard was released in 1982.

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".


Contents

[edit] Synopsis

At a city zoo, Serbian-born fashion designer, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), stands before the cage of the black panther, apparently trying to make a sketch of it. She catches the attention of an American naval construction designer, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), when she balls up a draft of the sketch and tries to throw it in a trash bin, without success. The two then become engaged in a conversation, with Irena eventually agreeing to taking him to 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.

[edit] 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, it can also be considered 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.

Simone Simon in Cat People (1942)
Simone Simon in Cat People (1942)

[edit] Cast

  • Simone Simon as Irena Dubrovna Reed
  • Kent Smith as Oliver Reed
  • Tom Conway as Dr. Louis Judd
  • Jane Randolph as Alice Moore
  • Jack Holt as The Commodore
  • Elizabeth Russell as The Cat Woman (uncredited)
  • Alan Napier as Doc Carver (uncredited)
  • Theresa Harris as Minnie, waitress at Sally Lunds café (uncredited)
  • Elizabeth Dunn as Miss Plunkett, pet shop owner (uncredited)
  • Mary Halsey as Blondie, apartment house desk clerk (uncredited)


Cast notes

[edit] Production details

Cat People was the first production for producer Val Lewton, who was a journalist, novelist and poet turned story editor for David O. Selznick. RKO hired Lewton to make horror films on a budget of under $150,000 to titles provided by the studio.[2]

The film was shot from 28 July to 21 August 1942 at RKO's "Gower Gulch" studios in Hollywood, with a budget of under $140,000.[3][4] Sets left over from previous, higher-budgeted RKO productions—notably the staircase from The Magnificent Ambersons—were utilized.[5]

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".

Near the end of the filming of Cat People, two crews were working to finish the picture on time, one at night, filming the animals, and one during the day with the cast.[2]

[edit] Reception

An image from Cat People
An image from Cat People

Reviews of the film were mixed when the film was first released. Variety magazine called Cat People a "weird drama of thrill-chill caliber"[6] while Bosley Crowther writing for the New York Times commented that "The Cat People is a labored and obvious attempt to induce shock."[7]

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.[8]

Prolific film critic Roger Ebert has included Cat People in his list of great movies. [9] As of February 6, 2008, the film holds a 94% Fresh rating on popular ratings website Rotten Tomatoes.[10]

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.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ IMDB Elizabeth Russell (I)
  2. ^ a b TCM Notes
  3. ^ IMDB Business data
  4. ^ IMDB Filming locations
  5. ^ Kent Jones. Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows documentary fiim, 2008. Broadcast on Turner Classic Movies on 14 January 2008.
  6. ^ "Cat People", Variety 1 Jan 1943
  7. ^ Bosley Crowther, "Cat People (1942)" New York Times 7 Dec 1942
  8. ^ "Cat People (1942)" TV Guide
  9. ^ Roger Ebert, "Cat People (1942)" Chicago Sun-Times 12 March 2006
  10. ^ Rotten Tomatoes "Cat People (1942)"

[edit] Documentary

  • Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD documentary 2005

[edit] External links