Cat People (1942)

Cat People (1942) by Jacques Tourneur, was the product of writers and producers putting their heads together at a time when horror was in its infancy, and coming up with what they considered to be a new concept. 

This is because even then, they had seen that horror was already focused on a few supernatural and historic themes ― the ghost ― the vampire ― the Frankenstein monster  ― the Mummy ― there Werewolf ― and they'd already seen that there were not too many more in the blockbuster canon; maybe.

Hence the decision to see if the cat could be developed into a truly lasting horror theme. The vision of Cat People is not one of lycanthropy ― although it is similar. And it is not quite one of demonic possession, although again there is plenty in  common.

Horror is in fact such a ubiquitous and predictable genre and has been for so long that it is easy to forget its roots. Maybe even people today would not recognise Cat People as horror, and as such it is probably understandable as a fantastical extension of film noir.

The horror in Cat People is sexuality itself, and the hero a woman who does not sleep with nor even kiss her husband, for a fear that passion itself could turn her into a panther. The psychological implications of social repression are manifest.

Simone Simon in Cat People (1942)

Kent Smith in Cat People (1942)

Cat People is still however one of these rarities ― a unique film. Cat People was the product of writers and producers putting their heads together, at a time when horror was in its infancy, and coming up with what they considered to be a new concept. 

This is because even then, they had seen that horror was already focused on a few supernatural and historic themes ― the ghost ― the vampire ― the Frankenstein monster  ― the Mummy ― there Werewolf ― and not too many more, in the blockbuster canon, maybe.

Hence the decision to see if the cat could be developed into a truly lasting horror theme. The vision of Cat People is not one of lycanthropy ― although it is similar. And it is not quite one of demonic possession, although again there is plenty in  common.

Cat People was massively popular and profitable on release in 1942, and Jacques Tourneur and the cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca, who also worked together on the classic film noir Out of the Past, did make great use of light and shadow. Irena is often placed in darkness, and the silhouettes of other characters are cast on the wall behind her, wrapping her with shadows that feel like a cage.

Added to this is the fact that much is achieved with little, as in for example the scene in the swimming pool, where Alice treads water and something unseen growls and prowls around. The effects of Val Lewton's movies are perhaps not frightening, but unsettling and above all thoroughly melancholy.

As for Cat People’s place in a history of Film Noir, it at the very least merits an honourable mention. For a start, two of the common noir style items are wholly present ― the lighting and the darkness, both in contrast and in expressionistic manipulation ― and the uses of psychoanalysis, which comes up again and again in film noir.

Psychoanalysis in Cat People (1942)

Director Jacques Tourneur deserves a lot of credit for the magic and ongoing success of Cat People movie. Above all he makes the story seem more intelligent than it is, something achieved 

Not since the heyday of James Whale in the early and mid-thirties had there been anything like this one, a horror art movie. As persuasively acted by Kent Smith and Simone Simon, it concerns a young American architect, romantic if somewhat dry, and his Serbian-born wife, who has an irrational fear of turning into a cat.

Irena and Oliver announce their engagement at a party in a restaurant, where an inexplicable and disturbing thing happens: She is approached by a strange woman (Elizabeth Russell), who affects a cat-like appearance and addresses her in Serbian, calling her "sister." We never see this woman again, but her spectre haunts the movie. Are there lesbian notes in her approach to Irena? Perhaps in the sense that she is a powerful animal who challenges Oliver's right to claim a mate?

When the always patient Oliver observes, "I've never kissed you," Irena tells him: "I've lived in dread of this moment. I've never wanted to love you. I've stayed away from people ... I've fled from the past. Some things you could never know, or understand -- evil things." 

Some of their conversations take place while he stands on one side of her bedroom door and she slumps against the other side. It's a new kind of love, it's almost teenage, and it's love with psychic complications, and so maintains a line between the gothic traditions evolved from 19th Century literature, directly into film noir.

Growling and prowling around the pool in Cat People (1942)

It seems odd but it would be true that if made today CGI effects would reveal the cat-person for what she is. But this is gothic, not horror, and it is film noir, and film fantasy, and the key to Cat People is that we never even see the cat people. We don't see anything. We don't want to see anything and we survive the movie without seeing anything.

Jacques Tourneur at this stage in his career was a sensualist, something not true of his successors, Mark Robson and Robert Wise. Tourneur turns Cat People into a fantasy composed of the textures of the black fur of Irene's coat, the silk of her stockings, the flakes of falling snow on Irene and Oliver's wedding night, the wet tarmac across which Jane Randolph has to make her scary walk home; the ebony of an Egyptian cat-statue, the fabric of a couch torn by Irene's fingernails, the white enamel of Irene's bath-tub and the gleaming dusky hunch of her wet shoulders as she sits weeping within it. 

It's subtle movie, but also physical, and at the same time Kent Smith plays that film noir staple, the good plain American guy, the very straight guy role that the picture needs to produce a counter to its weirdness. 

Maybe too, it didn't seem weird at the time, and that the picture industry just ended up travelling in a different direction. The horror genre was not really a thing in the 1940s, just a mixture of fantasy, noir and supernatural storytelling. 

At that time there were many Dracula and Frankenstein spin-offs and sequels, although the moments of fright in these are rare.

Cat People was not just Val Lewton's first quickie horror, for it became more. It became an object lesson in how rich a work of film poetry one could make from little. The horror genre may also have made a large step forward too.

"A Kiss Could Change Her Into a Monstrous Fang-and-Claw Killer!" boasted the tagline in 1942. The statement is symbolic of the loss of one's virginity, and the background of Cat People is rooted hard within the natures of and misconceptions about sexuality at the time.

Just as film noir often shows psychoanalysis at work, or uses psychoanalytic techniques to draw sexual and social imagery, so does Cat People tread the same ground.

Irena is not allowed to kiss a man or she changes into a monstrous beast. A metaphor for loss of virginity with a result stemming from some strange old folklore, creating the central idea that a woman lives in fear of her own sexuality.

This movie provides a good demonstration of how you can still generate good suspense without violence seen on-screen. 

Cat People (1942) on Wikipedia