Review of Cat People (1942) by Art S — 22 May 2011

Cat People begins at the Central Park Zoo where a mysterious young fashion artist Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) is drawing on her pad of paper right in front of the panther cage. A handsome man Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) notices that she misses the trashcan that she tries to throw a sketch she ripped out into. They begin talking and eventually fall in love with each other.

Irena and Oliver soon marry. While sitting in a restaurant, she is confronted by a stranger whose face somehow resembles that of a cat. Irena becomes obsessed with the notion that she may be a member of an ancient Serbian tribe that would metamorphoses into panthers whenever they were aroused by jealousy. Because of her obsession, she and Oliver's relationship starts to dwindle. Oliver no longer knows whether he's in love with her anymore. He and his co-worker Alice (Jane Rudolph) begin to grow closer.

Irena soon becomes jealous and begins stalking her rival Alice. Her stalking culminates in two of the films most memorable scenes, one where Alice feels she's being followed and as the tension comes to a peak the sound of a leopard is heard but it turns into the sound of the bus which arrives seemingly in time; the other memorable scene takes place in an indoor swimming pool late at night where Alice gets terrified by the presence of an animal - it turns out that it was just Irena who frightened her by coming into the room without showing herself.

Psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway) belittles Irena's "Cat Woman"; that is until he is horrified by what happens when he kisses her. Though the psychiatrist wounds her, she escapes in her panther form, opens the panther's cage and allows herself to be killed; possibly because of guilt.

"She never lied to us.".

Cat People was the first official film made by director Jacques Tourneur and the first produced by Val Lewton. It ranks as one of the most influential and most intelligent psychological horror films ever made, one that gives a commentary about psychology and the taboos of desire. Made on a budget well under $150,000 for RKO Radio Pictures, Cat People was a film that brought a lot of depth to the "B" movie and one that would influence so many like-minded filmmakers on a small budget that followed. In fact, if one has a good eye for details, one will notice that the set looks oddly familiar; that is because Lewton and RKO used the same exact set left over from the production of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons.

Cat People was an all around success on both an artistic level as well as a financial level earning almost $4 million and saving RKO from financial disaster. It is arguably the best film Lewton ever produced, one that would eventually get a sequel two years later called The Curse of the Cat People. Most horror films made during this particular time focused most on the unveiling of some kind of beast and/or sudden scares. Cat People however, is a completely different kind of horror film as it is absent of showing any kind of horror creature. Both Lewton and Tourneur had the keen instinct of knowing that it would be scarier and much more effective if they did not show the creature. Instead they'd rely more on turning up the tension with suspenseful editing techniques, great use of sound, and noirish cinematography that uses low-key lighting causing the creature to be kept in the shadows. The film also has fine performances from the cast, particularly Simone Simon who is subtly seductive whenever she is onscreen.

The following year after releasing Cat People, Lewton and director Tourneur would collaborate to make two other classic horror pictures, I Walked With a Zombie and The Leopard Man. What makes their collaborations most impressive, other than how intelligent they are for a horror film, is that despite having a low budget, none of them ever look like they were made for such a small amount of money. Tourneur's visual style is fantastic throughout; his low-key lighting techniques, mostly brought up through necessity, would prove to be heavily influential on not only horror films, but also the film noir genre, a genre that he would help define.

For more evidence of how much it has inspired other films, Cat People is alluded to in Vincente Minnelli's 1952 showbiz drama The Bad and the Beautiful. Kirk Douglas plays a producer with a low budget film called Doom of the Cat Men. Douglas' character believes that the success to the film is the decision to not show the monsters, instead relying on darkness on screen letting the viewer's imagination create fear, knowing that having people in costumes would be convincing enough. Though, unlike Lewton, he rejects an offer to produce a sequel to the film.

Jacques Tourneur would continue making highly praised and influential films after Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Leopard Man. Tourneur, who was the son of French director Maurice Tourneur, followed up these classics with a romantic drama (Days of Glory (1944)), a melodrama (Experiment Perilous (1944)), and a western (Canyon Passage (1946)) before being promoted to the A-list of directors at RKO. With his new promotion he made what has become one of the definitive pieces of classic film noir, as well as his true masterpiece, Out Of the Past (1947). The following year, he made the spy film/film noir starring Robert Ryan called Berlin Express. He became a freelance director throughout the ?0s with some successes but it wasn't until 1957 that he would reach the same brilliance as his 1940s output with another defining film noir, Nightfall, and another great horror film, Night of the Demon (which would be re-edited and released as Curse of the Demon the following year).

Many other horror films would use some of the same style and techniques (Cat People would also be re-made in 1982 by director Paul Schrader, to much less acclaim) but none could ever match the superb artistry involved in the making of this low-budget moody, horror film. Cat People ranks as one of the greatest horror films ever made, a masterpiece. The film is quite simply magnificent. 10/10.