Cat People (1942) Review

Cat People is a 1942 horror film produced by Val Newton and directed by Jacques Tourneur. Initial reviews were mixed. Monthly Film Bulletin stated that Cat People was "A fantastic story, reasonably produced and directed", while Variety magazine quoted that the film is "well-made on a moderate budget outlay" and relies upon "developments of surprises confined to psychology and mental reaction, rather than transformation to grotesque and marauding characters for visual impact on the audiences".

Variety said the script would be "hazy for the average audience in several instances, [but] carries sufficient punch in the melodramatic sequences to hold it together in good style", and said Tourneur "does a fine job with a most difficult assignment". The Monthly Film Bulletin complemented the photography and acting, saying that Simone Simon, "only partly succeeds in interpreting the part of Irena, but lighting and camera work and sound recording help to make her performance adequate". The film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being, “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Cat People (1941) begins in New York City with Irena Dubrovna, a Serbian fashionista sketching black panthers at the local zoo. She engages a man, Oliver, in conversation before inviting him back to her home for tea. As they depart, one of Irena’ sketches is shown to have been a panther skewered with a blade.

Back at the apartment, Oliver questions Irena on a peculiar decoration: a knight on a horse stabbing a giant cat. She informs him the cat represents evil and the knight the king of Serbia, before launching into the legend of her people; who long ago were enslaved by a group called the Mameluks and in the midst of their captivity turned to witchcraft and satanism. When King John of Serbia (the guy on the horse) drove out the Mameluks, he discovered what their former slaves had turned to and had them all executed. Despite his orders, however, the most clever and evil villagers were able to escape into the mountains.
 

Oliver doesn't seem to care and basically ignores everything she says. After hearing her dramatic tale, he quickly decides to get her a kitten. After all, she just explained her people find cats to be synonymous with evil. She’ll love it! Shockingly however, the cat hisses upon meeting his new owner. “Cat’s just don’t like me,” Irena explains, and asks if they can go to the pet shop to trade it back.

When they enter the shop, the animals go into a frenzy. The manager of the store seems suspicious, and explains that animals can sense things about people that humans cannot. Irena makes it clear she must control her passion, and it become apparent that she believes herself to be a descendent of the cat people from her village. She is terrified that if her passions are allowed to run unbounded, that she will transform into a panther and murder her lover, such is the curse of her people.

Despite her concerns, Oliver convinces Irena to accept his hand in marriage but almost immediately after the wedding, things start to get weird. At their reception, a car like woman refers to Irena as “moya sestra”, my sister, which induces a considerable amount of trepidation, especially surrounding physical intimacy with her new husband. Despite this, Oliver is patient with his wife, but convinced her to see a psychiatrist when she feels urges to feed her dead pet canary to the panthers at the zoo. The psychiatrist, Dr. Judd, tries to convince her that her paranoia stems from traumatic events lived in her childhood but Irena isn’t convinced. She returns to find that Oliver has been close to his assistant Alice, and becomes incensed.

She happens to see Alice eating at a restaurant with Oliver one day, and waits until Alive leaves to go home before following her. Right before she is able to strike, a bus pulls up and Alice hops on board. A groundskeeper soon after finds a pair of dead sheep with paw prints leading away from them before turning into a pair of women’s shoe prints. When Irena returns home, she appears exhausted and dirty. She falls into a deep sleep in the bathtub and dreams of Dr. Judd in King John’s clothing convincing her to steal the key to the panthers cage.

One night after visiting a museum with Irena and Oliver, Alice decides to go for a swim. She enters the basement of her apartment building and suddenly realizes she is being stalked by some sort of animal. She runs and jumps into the pool and begins screaming for help. The lights come on, and there stands Irena, explaining she was merely looking for Oliver. When Alice goes to get her bathrobe, she finds it torn into little pieces, as a if a cat had attacked it.

Irena meets with Dr. Judd again and seems more confident. She returns home and tells Oliver that she no longer has anything to fear; but Oliver explains he has waited too long and fell in love with Alice. Later at the office, Oliver and Alice narrowly escape attack by a panther but realize it to be Irena upon smelling her perfume. They try to call doctor Judd and warn him, but he ignores the call when Irena enters his office.

The Doctor Kisses Irena, and notices her eyes begin to change. Suddenly, he realizes she has been telling the truth all along, and jumps back to retrieve a weapon, but not before he is attacked and killed. Irena makes her escape and heads for the zoo, where she releases the panther who promptly mauls and kills her before being hit by a car. Alice and Oliver happen upon the panther while looking for Irena, assuming it’s her, Oliver says, “She never lied to us."

Image Quote: “She never lied to us”

In Cat People, Lewton and his production are credited for inventing or popularising the horror film technique called the 'Lewton Bus'. The term derives from the scene in which Irena is following Alice. The audience expects Irena to turn into a panther at any moment and attack. 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 is just a bus pulling up. This technique has been used many times since. Any scene in which tension is dissipated by a mere moment of startlement, a boo!, is a 'Lewton bus' (Cat People (1942)).

Much has been said of Lewton and Tourneur's use of shadows in lieu of an actual monster in the film. This is very much in contrast to competing horror films being produced by Universal at the time. J. P. Tollette in his book Dreams of Darkness: Fantasy and the Films of Val Lewton speaks to the meaning of the extensive use of shadows in the film: "While engaging our imaginative participation, the absence marked by those dark patches speaks of a fundamental – and disturbing – relationship between man and his world: it signals a black hole or vacant meaning in the physical realm which, in spite of man's natural desire to fill it with consciousness and significance, persistently and troublingly remains open” (Cat People (1942)).

                                                  Works Cited

“Cat People (1942 Film).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Jan. 2018,                 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_People_(1942_film)#cite_note-13.