1942 Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Serbian fashion designer Irena Dubrovna and American marine engineer Oliver Reed meet in Central Park, fall in love and marry after a brief courtship; but Irena won't consummate the union for fear that she will turn into a panther compelled to kill her lover, pursuant to a belief harbored by her home village.
la Femme Panthère, Katzenmenschen, Ludzie-koty, La mujer pantera, Il bacio della pantera, La Féline, Macskaemberek, 豹族, Oamenii felină, A Pantera, 캣 피플, Mačací ľudia, Sangue de Pantera, Οι Άνθρωποι Γάτες, Люди-кошки, Хората-котки, La marca de la pantera, Kedi Kız, Kočičí lidé, キャット・ピープル, La dona pantera, Den sorte panter
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I wasn't prepared for how sad this film would be.
The world still ignores women's pain until they fear it. We still aren't believed, even when we want to talk about it, to our loved ones, to our doctors. It's hysteria. We're too sensitive. It makes us angry, and righteously so, but we learn to denounce that rage and cage it up, keep it confined to the shadows.
Irena just wants to belong. She wants to have a normal, happy life, but she struggles with something inside of her that she can't control. Cat People lives in a space of psychosexual terror, where the fantastical is explicitly stated and everyday despair is only a suggestion, but it's the tiptoeing whispers…
90
A 73 minute psychodrama of sexual repression and dormant generational trauma, all while casually being one of the greatest black and white films in cinema history. In re-watching this, it isn't merely the 'bus' and 'swimming pool' moments that linger - it's the economy of the dialogue, and just how Jacques Tourneur plays with DP Nicholas Musuraca's shadows. The catharsis merely felt, but never seen, is so tangibly constructed via Tourneur's implication of terror.
“what does one tell a husband? one tells him nothing.”
every other movie from the 40s:
woman: *acts slightly out of the ordinary*
the men in the movie immediately: she should be COMMITTED
this movie:
woman: i think i’m a cat and if i kiss my husband i’m afraid i will eat him alive
the men in the movie including her psychiatrist after months of therapy: if you don’t stop acting so goddamn quirky we’re gonna have to put you away you silly girl
Boy meets girl, boy marries girl, girl accidentally turns into a bloodthirsty panther.
It was probably so easy to be a psychiatrist in the forties. Just slick your hair down so hard that it reveals the shape of your skull, light a cigarette, and ignore your patients as they patiently and rationally lay out their struggles so you can try to sleep with them. Gotta be one of the lowest effort rackets ever developed and this is coming from a podcaster/cartoonist.
Spoilers ahead.
Cat People is a quietly devastating look at one woman's life, and the impact social pressures and expectations have on her ability to live freely, told through the vehicle of horror. Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) is deeply alone, telling Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) on the very day they meet that he's her "first real friend." (Her word choice is terribly touching, suggesting a hopeful optimism that "only friend" would not have conveyed.) It's hard to tell if Irena truly feels lonely (later, she says that she "loves silence and loneliness"), or if she simply plays the role of a lonely woman because it's what society has taught her is expected from a girl who is single and lives…
73/100
Not sure why Nicholas Musuraca isn't held in the same high regard as Gregg Toland and James Wong Howe—this is a strong contender for the most strikingly lit film of all time (as is Out of the Past). Stephen King discusses the stalking/bus scene extensively in Danse Macabre, and admits that he can't enjoy the suspense because he's too distracted by how obvious it is that the "park" was created on a soundstage; that sort of thing rarely bothers me in any context, but it's especially irrelevant with Tourneur orchestrating a magnificent start-stop rhythm, as Jane Randolph continually passes from stark pools of light into deep shadows. (The slightly different echoes of the two women's shoes on the concrete…
"But I love silence. I love loneliness. And they—they are in me. Their strength, warmth. They're soft, they're soft." A Jungian fever dream of life in the urban jungle. Pop psychology, sexual repression, and marital regrets stir in the film that kicked off Val Lewton's string of RKO greats. Might be the most effective use of light, shadow, and fog in the history of its genre. The Criterion Blu-ray looks incredible.
First of all, and unrelated to the film, happy Mardi Gras, everyone! I stayed in out of the cold and rain and watched movies.
On to the film!
Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur are both, together and apart, fantastic filmmakers. They have created many of my favorite horror films and several other fine works outside that genre, and as far as their work together, this might be their best. It works in shadows and implications, eschewing flashy special effects. Much has probably been written already about how this film builds tension masterfully, about how its low budget forced the filmmakers to create horror out of nothing, letting the audience's imagination drive the film. Like Lovecraft's best work, it doesn't tell…
