Cat People (1942)

Director:

Jacques Tourneur

Writer:

DeWitt Bodeen (written by)

Release Date:

25 December 1942 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

She knew strange, fierce pleasures that no other woman could ever feel!

Plot:

An American man marries a Serbian immigrant who fears that she will turn into the cat person of her homeland's fables if they are intimate together.

Plot Keywords:

Marriage | Panther | Psychiatrist | New York | Artist

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Simone Simon	...	Irena Dubrovna Reed
Kent Smith	...	Oliver Reed
Tom Conway	...	Dr. Louis Judd
Jane Randolph	...	Alice Moore
Jack Holt	...	The Commodore
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
George Ford	...	Whistling Cop (scenes deleted)
Bud Geary	...	Mounted Policeman (scenes deleted)
Leda Nicova	...	Patient (scenes deleted)
Henrietta Burnside	...	Sue Ellen (uncredited)
Alec Craig	...	Zookeeper (uncredited)
Eddie Dew	...	Street policeman (uncredited)
Elizabeth Dunn	...	Miss Plunkett, pet shop owner (uncredited)
Dynamite	...	The panther (uncredited)
Dot Farley	...	Mrs. Agnew, scrubwoman (uncredited)
Mary Halsey	...	Blondie, apartment house desk clerk (uncredited)
Theresa Harris	...	Minnie, waitress at Sally Lunds café (uncredited)
Charles Jordan	...	Bus driver (uncredited)
Donald Kerr	...	Taxi driver (uncredited)
Connie Leon	...	Neighbor who called police (uncredited)
Murdock MacQuarrie	...	Sheep caretaker (uncredited)
Alan Napier	...	Doc Carver (uncredited)
John Piffle	...	Café proprietor (uncredited)
Betty Roadman	...	Mrs. Hansen (uncredited)
Elizabeth Russell	...	The Cat Woman (uncredited)
Stephen Soldi	...	Organ grinder (uncredited)

Directed by
Jacques Tourneur

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
DeWitt Bodeen		written by

Produced by
Val Lewton	....	producer

Original Music by
Roy Webb

Cinematography by
Nicholas Musuraca

Film Editing by
Mark Robson

Art Direction by
Albert S. D'Agostino
Walter E. Keller

Set Decoration by
A. Roland Fields		(as Al Fields)
Darrell Silvera

Costume Design by
Renié		(gowns)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Doran Cox	....	assistant director

Sound Department
John L. Cass	....	sound recordist

Special Effects by
Vernon L. Walker	....	special effects (uncredited)

Visual Effects by
Linwood G. Dunn	....	photographic effects (uncredited)

Music Department
C. Bakaleinikoff	....	musical director
John Leipold	....	orchestrator (uncredited)
Leonid Raab	....	orchestrator (uncredited)

Other crew
Mel Koontz	....	animal trainer (uncredited)
Lou L. Ostrow	....	supervisor (uncredited)

Production Companies

• RKO Radio Pictures

Distributors

• RKO Radio Pictures (1942) (USA) (theatrical)
• RKO Radio Pictures (1952) (USA) (theatrical) (re-release)
• Ajay Film Company (1976) (USA) (theatrical) (re-release)
• C&C Television Corporation (1955) (USA) (TV) (syndication)
• Criterion Collection, The (1994) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Image Entertainment (1995) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• King of Video (????) (USA) (VHS)
• Nostalgia Merchant, The (1980) (USA) (VHS)
• RKO Home Video (????) (USA) (VHS)
• Turner Classic Movies (TCM) (????) (USA) (VHS)
• Turner Home Entertainment (2005) (USA) (DVD)
• Warner Home Video (2008) (USA) (DVD)

Also Known As:

A Pantera (Portugal) [pt]
Il bacio della pantera (Italy) [it]
Katzenmenschen (Germany) [de]
Kissaihmiset (Finland) [fi]
La dona pantera (Spain: Catalan title) [ca]
La féline (France) [fr]
La marca de la pantera (Argentina) [es]
La mujer pantera (Spain) [es]
Ludzie-koty (Poland) [pl]
Oi anthropoi gates (Greece) (festival title) [el]
Rovdjurskvinnan (Sweden) [sv]
Sangue de Pantera (Brazil) [pt]
To fili tis magissas (Greece) [el]

Runtime:

73 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Czech | Serbian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Finland:K-16 (1978) | UK:A (original rating) | Canada:PG (Ontario) | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:Approved (PCA #8693) | West Germany:12 (video rating)

Filming Locations:

RKO Studios - 780 Gower Street, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

R.K.O. gave Val Lewton only $150,000 to make the film, resulting in "creative" producing. This forced many of the scenes requiring special effects to be done in shadows which many believe increased the suspense of the film. When studio execs insisted that more footage of the panther be included in the movie, Lewton was able to maintain the budget and the suspense of the film by limiting how many scenes the panther could be visibly seen and told the cinematographer to "keep the panther in the shadows." Thus the panther was only visible in the office and zoo cage.

Goofs:

Factual errors: There was not a King John of Serbia who defeated the Mamelukes. None of the lists of Kings/Princes of Serbia include a King John. The closest historical personage was the Holy Martyr John Vladimir [St. Jovan Vladimir], killed by Tsar Vladimir in 1015 AD.

Quotes:

Dr. Louis Judd: Why would she wish to harm you?
Alice Moore: Because I'm in love with her husband.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Cat People: An Intimate Portrait by Paul Schrader (2002) (V)

A howl in a concrete jungle

One doesn't want for a second to take credit away from screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen, one of the most intelligent scenarists the horror film evr had the benefit of. But it's a matter of record that producer Val Lewton, here as on all his horror pictures, was responsible for the initial premise and the screenplay's final draft. And one wonders how much of Lewton - one of those male writers who tended to form his most empathetic bond with his female characters - there is in Irene: like him an eastern european immigrant (she from Serbia, he from Russia, albeit second generation he grew up in an essentially Russian household) living in the very different world of 40's America, both hyper-sensitive (particularly over morbid fantasies regarding cats) and artists of an essentially solitary and modest nature, but prone to fits of violent temper. Certainly, Irene is one of the most vivid and haunting protagonists any horror film ever had. Some critics may disparage the film as inferior to its follow-up, 'I Walked With a Zombie', but although that's a more completely achieved work, none of its characters captures the imagination as Irene does. One scarcely needs to heap more praise on the most celebrated suspense sequences, but the rest of the movie is more than just a set-up for these. It is, for one thing, oneof the supreme evocations of spiritual loneliness in the cinema. As Irene huddles by the doorknob between her and husband Oliver, while the panther in the nearby zoo calls out through the wintery night, this is an evocation of an isolation more than merely physical and tragically irrevocable. Lewton also had on his side, in this instance, the best of his directors, Jacques Tourneur, a sensualist (which could scarecely be said of his successors, Mark Robson and Robert Wise) who makes of the story a sort of tactile poem in 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. This is a subtle movie, but also an intensely physical one. If there is a weak spot, it lies with the casting of Kent Smith as 'good plain Americano' Oliver Reed. His boy next door charm is hopelessly inadequate to the context of Irene's drama and he increasingly seems doltish and blindly insensitive in the blandness of his responses to her torment. The film might have been greater still if Lewton had cast an edgier, fierier actor, one whose incomprehension of Irene might have betrayed its own violent streak and extended the 'cat people' metaphor beyond Irene herself. Think of someone like John Garfield in the role! But Garfield would have been out of Lewton's budget range and one can scarcely harangue the producer for being too modest, in the production of his first quickie horror, for fully grasping how rich a work of film poetry he and his collaborators were in the process of creating. But poetry it is. The horror genre has never produced as much of that as it ought to have done, so for heaven's sake, make the most of this and the other Lewton productions.