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)

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: When Irena is alarmed by the woman in the restaurant, she makes the sign of the cross left-to-right, as a Western Catholic would. However, as a Serb, she would more likely have made it right-to-left, as Orthodox and Eastern Catholics do. And if she was Orthodox, she would join three fingers (thumb, index and middle finger) to make the sign of the cross, not use the whole hand.

Quotes:

Irena Dubrovna: Oh, it's alright. It's just that cats don't seem to like me.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The 100 Greatest Scary Moments (2003) (TV)

Vastly underrated and hugely influential

I have this theory about the horror films of Val Lewton. It is my contention that these movies caused a sea change in the content and tone of the movies of Alfred Hitchcock. The reason I say this is simple, really: Lewton is the only filmmaker I have ever caught Hitchcock cribbing scenes from. He did it twice. Once from The Seventh Victim (dir. by Mark Robson), which I swear to god provides the first half of the Shower Scene from Psycho. The second from Cat People, which provided the pet store scene in The Birds. This second scene is almost a shot for shot swipe. Both of these steals are evidence that Hitch knew and admired the Lewton movies. More than that, though, there is a change in the subtext of Hitchcock's thrillers after the Lewton movies. The movies he made before them were cut from the Fritz Lang mold of political thrillers. After the Lewton movies, Hitch's movies became more psychosexual in nature. Vertigo, for instance, could easily fit into Lewton's output.

Cat People is the first of the Lewton movies and sets the tone for them. It pretends to be about a McGuffin (serbian were -panthers), but is actually about something else (in this case, frigidity and repressed lesbianism). This represents a huge change in the evolution of the horror movie. Cat People is the first horror movie to explore these themes as central concerns rather than as sub-rosa undercurrents. It also pioneered the techniques of film noir (which as a genre didn't really exist yet). Cat People is strikingly stylized and its effect is of stranding the viewer in the middle of a darkened room with some dreadful beast circling just outside his sphere of perception. This has a hell of an impact--particularly if you have the good fortune to see this in a theater. I'm not going to claim that Cat People is one of the best horror movies ever made (it does have flaws), but it is one of the four most influential horror movies ever made (along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Psycho, and Night of the Living Dead). But unlike its brethren, its influence spreads corrosively through the entirety of cinema through both film noir and the films of Alfred Hitchcock. You would be hard pressed to find any film short of Citizen Kane or Rashomon that is nearly as influential.