Review: Cat People

All-American architect Oliver (Kent Smith) falls for a cute Serbian girl named Irena (Simone Simon), and for a while they’re happy. However, Irena is a troubled girl. She’s come to believe that her family is under a bizarre curse whereby they morph into cats when angered. Oliver thinks she’s being a silly little girl, but Irena is unable to be swayed on the matter, causing Oliver to seek counsel from co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph), who would very much like to be more than just friends and co-workers. When Irena jealously suspects something is going on between them…well, look out! Tom Conway turns up as a dry psychiatrist whom Irena goes to see, whilst Alan Napier is a friend of Oliver.

 

One of the best horror films of the 1940s, this Val Lewton chiller from director Jacques Tourneur (“Out of the Past”, “Night of the Demon”, “The Comedy of Terrors”) is at times beautiful, bizarre, haunting, creepy, and sad. There are at least three classic creepy scenes; 1) The brief but unforgettable scene where a black-clad mystery woman who starts speaking to Simon in Serbian, 2) An almost unbearably tense walk at night. It really ought not to be so tense, it’s such a simple thing yet Tourneur keeps you on edge right until the perfectly executed ‘jump’ scare, one of the few such scenes that I actually like, and 3) A late night swim turns into one of the scariest and most atmospheric scenes in cinematic history. Again, it’s something that seems so thoroughly ordinary at first, but Tourneur has you freaking out due to a perfect combination of sound, shadow, and camera placement by director Tourneur and his B&W cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (“The Seventh Victim”, “Bedlam”, “Clash By Night”). It’s nightmare fuel (Also nightmare fuel? That panther growl. It sounds unwell and it’s completely unsettling). Outside of those scenes, the big plus here is the cute yet beguiling and slightly otherworldly performance by French actress Simone Simon. She’s cute as a button, but just ‘off’ enough that you’re never quite sure whether to be on her side or not. Her character Irena is an outwardly sweet-natured girl who is nonetheless convinced that she is cursed as a kind of demonic feline. Through Simon’s performance you can’t help but feel for her, even though you feel like you should be slightly scared of her, too. She gets less sympathetic and more worrying the longer the film goes on. Whether she’s really cursed or just psychologically unbalanced, the curse is real to her and it causes great stress for her. I’m pretty sure Irena gives a canary a heart attack at one point, for instance.

 

Leading man Kent Smith is perfectly fine, though his character suffers a similar fate to many other romantic leading men of the period: He’s well-meaning but extremely insensitive, condescending and patronising. He treats Irena like she’s a little girl, and not a fully-grown woman (who may or may not be some kind of mythological feline creature). When she starts to show even the slightest bit of a psychological frailty, he at first dismisses it, then rudely spends time with another woman causing Irena to get jealous…and even more psychologically fragile. The character is frankly a bit irritating, even though you know he’s not actually a bad guy. He’s just looking for a more simple romantic relationship. The supporting performances by Tom Conway (a pretty decent George Sanders-type), Jane Randolph and a scene-stealing Alan Napier are all good as well.

 

This is such a bizarre story, it almost plays like “Dracula” but Serbian instead of Romanian, with a woman instead of a man, and cats instead of vampires/bats. You can tell that Tourneur and screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen (“The Seventh Victim”, “The Enchanted Cottage”) are pros because such a silly story gets taken seriously by the viewer (at least this viewer). When the shadow of a panther is seen late in the film, Tourneur and Bodeen have done such a great job that you’re never quite sure if it’s the panther from the zoo, or Simon in her cursed feline form, silly as you might think yourself for entertaining such an idea. It’s left somewhat ambiguous in the film, and rightly so.

 

Although “The Body Snatcher” is my favourite Val Lewton chiller, this one’s a minor masterpiece in character, mood, atmosphere, suggestion, and yes even the ‘jump scare’. Must-see, just don’t expect overt ‘horror’, as this is psychological in nature for the most part. It depends largely on suggestion and imagination. Lewton’s films are called ‘chillers’ for a reason. Unquestionably one of the best B-movies ever made.

 

Rating: A-