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".
Plot
At an American city zoo, Serbian-born fashion designer Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) makes sketches of a black panther. She catches the attention of marine engineer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), who strikes up a conversation. Irena invites him to her apartment for tea. As they walk away, one of Irena's discarded drafts is revealed as a panther impaled by a sword.
At her apartment, Oliver is intrigued by a statue of a medieval warrior on horseback impaling a large cat with his sword. Irena informs Oliver that the figure is the (fictional) King John of Serbia and that the cat represents evil. According to legend, long ago the Christian residents of her home village gradually turned to witchcraft and devil worship after being enslaved by the Mameluks. When King John drove the Mameluks out and saw what the villagers had become, he had them killed. However, "the wisest and the most wicked" escaped into the mountains. It gradually becomes clear that Irena believes she is descended from them, and that she fears that she will be transformed into a panther if aroused to passion. While she was growing up, the other children had called her mother a cat person and her father had died mysteriously.
Despite her odd beliefs, Oliver persuades her to marry him. However, during a party celebrating their engagement at a Serbian restaurant, a woman resembling a cat walks over and asks Irena if she is "moya sestra" ("my sister"). Dreading what could happen, Irena avoids sleeping with her husband. He persuades her to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), who tries to convince her that her fears are of a more mundane nature. When she discovers that Oliver has confided their marital problems to his attractive assistant, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph), she feels betrayed. At work, Alice confesses to Oliver that she loves him.
One night, Irena sees Oliver and Alice seated together at a restaurant. She follows Alice as she walks home alone. Alice becomes increasingly uneasy, sensing an unseen someone or something behind her. Just as she hears a menacing sound, a bus pulls up; she hastily boards it. Soon after, several sheep are killed. The bloodied pawprints leading away turn into imprints of a woman's shoes.
Later, when Alice decides to take a dip in the basement swimming pool of her apartment building, she is stalked by an animal shown only by its shadow. She jumps into the pool, using the water to keep the creature at bay. When Alice screams for help, Irena turns on the lights and claims to be looking for Oliver. Alice emerges, wondering if she had imagined the whole thing, until she finds her robe torn to shreds.
After a talk with Dr. Judd, Irena tells Oliver she is no longer afraid, but it is too late; Oliver has realized that he loves Alice and is getting a divorce. Later, at work, he and Alice are cornered by a ferocious animal. Thinking quickly, he grabs his T-square (which is in the shape of a cross) and tells Irena to go away.
After it leaves, Alice calls Dr. Judd to warn him to stay away from Irena, but he hangs up when the woman shows up. Attracted to her, he makes the fatal mistake of kissing her. She transforms into a panther and kills him, though he manages to wound her in the shoulder with the sword concealed in his cane. Oliver and Alice arrive a few minutes too late. Irena slips away, back in her human shape, and goes to the zoo. There, she opens the panther's cage and allows herself to be killed.
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
Production
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]
Reception
The film, which cost $141,659, brought in almost $4 million in its first two years and saved the studio from financial disaster.[6]
Reviews of the film were mixed when the film was first released. Variety called Cat People a "weird drama of thrill-chill caliber"[7] while Bosley Crowther writing for The New York Times commented that "The Cat People is a labored and obvious attempt to induce shock."[8] 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.[9]
Lewton accepted the assignment of producing a follow-up film called The Curse of the Cat People, but the movie, which retained Kent Smith and Jane Randolph's characters, and which showed Simone Simon either as a ghost or else as a child's imaginary friend, was not truly a horror movie.
Cat People has a cult following. Critic Roger Ebert has included it in his list of great films.[10] As of February 6, 2008, the film holds a 94% Fresh rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.[11]
Cat People is alluded to in a sequence in the 1952 film The Bad and The Beautiful. Jonathan Shields (played by Kirk Douglas) makes a name for himself as a producer with a low budget film called Duel of The Cat Men. The key to the success of the fictional film is said to be Shields' decision not to show the monsters, but to rely instead on darkness on screen and the imaginations of film goers to create fear when it becomes apparent that the costumes the studio has at hand would be unconvincing. Shields rejects an offer to produce a sequel to be called The Return of The Cat Men.
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 referring to this film.
As a nod to the movie, the DC Comics anti-heroine Catwoman uses the name Irene Dubrovna as an alias after she goes into hiding.
Notes
Documentary
- Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD documentary 2005
External links
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Val Lewton, film producer and screenwriter |
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