In this era of over bloated blockbusters and reboots of reboots its good to go back and reflect on what cinema once was – When motion pictures were black and white, but subjects and morals were layered in many shades of gray. This gray area is where writer producer Val Lewton thrived.
Val Lewton was born in the Ukraine in 1904. Having left her husband, his mother took her children to Berlin and then emigrated to Port Chester, New York. Being raised in a household of nothing but women would later have an impact on the pictures he made as an adult, his stories often portrayed strong but sympathetic women.
He studied journalism at Columbia University and wrote several books including the pulp novel No Bed of Her Own, which would later be made into the film No Man of Her Own with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. After working with David O. Selznick on pictures like “Gone With the Wind” he was contacted by RKO Pictures to run their horror department. They came to an amicable deal, Lewton would write and produce whatever he felt like with RKO picking the name of the titles, and the pictures couldn’t be longer than 75 minutes. The first picture, Cat People, would set him on the course of greatness.
Cat People (1941), directed by Jacques Tourneur, tells the story of a young woman, Irena Dubrovna (French actress Simone Simon), a fashion illustrator who’s recently emigrated from Serbia to the U.S. She meets, falls in love and reluctantly marries an engineer named Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). Why reluctantly? Because she believes she’s part of an ancient Balkan tribe of cat people, who when aroused or angered turn into panthers. Once married she refuses to consummate their vows for fear of killing her husband.
DeWitt Bodeen’s script with uncredited help from Lewton doesn’t show us any transformations or anything monstrous. Instead, he tells the story on a psychological level – are her fears real or is she sexually repressed? In one scene Irene and Oliver are at a restaurant with co workers. A beautiful woman walks over to Irena, the bow in her hair makes her look a bit like Batman’s Catwoman. She says to Irene “Moj Sistra.” When Oliver asks what she said, Irena replies hypnotically “My Sister.” A lot has been written about that line, implying that Irena’s frigidity is perhaps a sign of repressed lesbianism. I’ve never bought that, and I think it’s a rather sexist and condescending interpretation, implying that because a woman doesn’t want sex, she must be a lesbian.
Irene ends up going to a shrink (The Falcon’s Tom Conway) at the behest of her husband. Upon returning home, she sees Oliver and his lovely assistant Alice (Jane Randolph) together. She discovers that her husband has been confiding to Alice about Irena’s unwillingness to be intimate. This scene quietly sets off Irena’s jealousy and two of the most frightening scenes in the picture.
Alice, leaving a restaurant after meeting with Oliver, is being stalked by Irena or maybe a panther. This scene is shot on a very simple sidewalk set, which cuts from wide shots to close ups of feet with only the sound of the footstep creating the tension that is still copied today, but not as masterfully in my opinion. Director Jacques Tourneur and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca’s use of light and shadow give an atmospheric foreboding to this scene as well as hiding what is probably only about 20 feet of wall.
Once home Irene, covered in mud, strips down for a bath, a baptismal cleansing of herself of sin from murderous thoughts perhaps?
She goes back to the psychiatrist who then puts the moves on her and passionately kisses her. She obviously is not into him as she just stands there like a mannequin. He then tells her that it’s all in her mind since she didn’t transform to a panther. With all these guys owning her and telling her how to feel it’s no wonder she’s not getting hot for anyone.
Once back home, Oliver tells Irene he loves Alice and wants a divorce, this sets up what is perhaps Cat People’s most famous and chilling scene.
Alice goes to the pool of her building for a swim, when changing into her swimsuit she thinks she hears a leopard and immediately jumps into the pool. Several times she sees a shadow on the walls while treading water, then a full shadow of a cat and starts screaming. 
These screams echoing off the walls are spine tingling. There was no such thing as sound designers back then, so I’m curious as to how it was achieved. It sounds layered whatever work was done to it. It is quite bone chilling. Her screams are interrupted by the appearance of Irene in the pool room, coyly taunting Alice.
Cat People went on to be one of the biggest grossing pictures in 1942. It made 8 million bucks on a $134,000 budget and solidified Lewton as RKO’s Horror guy. For the next four years, Lewton would produce eight more influential horror pictures for the studio and couple of non-horror ones before heart problems lead to his untimely death at the age of 46.
Today’s filmmakers and studio chiefs could learn a thing or two from the works of Val Lewton. These pictures were B-films made on the cheap but done so with intelligence and style. I’m sure audiences back then craved action and gore like today but when shown a picture with subtle horrors and relatable characters they still went back for more. Today’s films are visually stimulating with CGI and 3D and of course the latest in color technology, why not occasionally take Lewton’s approach and deal in shades of gray?
I highly recommend checking out the box set of his horror pictures which, unfortunately, is out of print but The Criterion Collection has released Cat People on Blu-Ray, a disk I plan on checking out soon.
