Day Seventeen: Cat People (1942)
A wonderful movie, one of the very best examples of the “heard not seen” type of filmmaking. Cat People has three very memorable sequences and none of them involve any wolfman style transformations on the part of the lead, Simone Simon. Simon plays a strange young woman who’s hesistant to make love to her new husband because she fears that stirring feelings of intense passion (or jealousy) will cause her to turn into a large panther.
There’s certainly a black joke in that summary somewhere. I’m not sure if Cat People was meant to be any kind of satire of bedroom politics (particularly of a time when couples slept in seperate beds on TV) but there’s a subtext there if you want to go looking for it. I doubt producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur were too interested in exploring the hypocrisy of marriage at the time, but that’s the fun of all these people turning into other creature movies, subtext can be mined in even the flimsiest entires of the genre (maybe not the Stephen King movie Silver Bullet, but that has Gary Busey in one of his best parts, a fair trade).
The funny thing is you don’t really root for Simon’s husband (played by Kent Smith) much at all. He’s ostensibly the hero but, like most heroes of these kinds of movies, he’s bland and uninteresting, a pretty boy who doesn’t appreciate what he has. There’s a particularly annoying scene where Smith confesses that he doesn’t know what to do with his potentially crazy wife, he’s never been unhappy before, he says. Never been unhappy before? Fuck you man. Its also clear that he would rather be off canoodling with his best friend (Jane Rudolph) anyway.The psychiatrist who tries to cure Simon of her suspicions may be a sleazy lech, but he at least knows a hell of a cat woman when he sees one.
Let’s get back to those three scares. One is set on a street near a park, one is in a swimming pool (its one of the most gorgeous scare scenes of any time or movie) and the final is set in the Simon-Smith home, when the good doctor finally discovers the truth of Simon’s heritage. All of the scenes work so well because Tourneur has patiently built to them, and has trusted that the scares would be worth the wait. The film also plays its secrets remarkably close to its vest, the nature of Simon’s problem is debatable until the very end.
I love this movie. The direction, that perfect, dreadful atmosphere, the wonderfully strange Simone Simon, the script that feeds us exposition at just the right times, that final look in Simon’s eyes toward the end of the film. Cat People is one of my favorite horror movies of the 1940s, and you’ll be surprised at how well it holds up. If only that doctor could’ve patented some sort of protective vest for indulging in the elusive, immensely pleasurable, but always difficult to survive panther nooky .
October 18th, 2007 at 1:31 am
It’s been a few years since I’ve seen Cat People but enjoyed it as much as you did, Chuck. The fact that the movie was so sophisticated about playing the horror psychologically, yet was still spooky for the reasons you mention, is truly impressive.
Will Smith’s company has been trying to get a remake (another one) going for years. I hope it never sees the light of day. Make the movie but call it anything but Cat People.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:04 am
A remake doesn’t sound too promising to me either. I’ve actually never seen the Paul Schrader remake, any good?
October 18th, 2007 at 9:55 am
The Schrader remake has it’s moments, but it replaces everything that was good about the original with kinkier sex. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s a lot tamer now than it was back in the 80s and frankly, Schrader’s sexual hang-ups stemming from his conservative religious upbringing don’t interest me that much. As a writer, he’s responsible for some great stuff, but as a director not so much. Not for me anyway.