The Cat People

After hearing the background of the making of The Cat People, I was a bit skeptical of the quality of the picture. However, after watching the movie I realized that my doubts were totally unfounded. I am amazed at the quality of film that Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur were able to produce given their limited resources. What they lacked in budget, time, and star power they made up in ingenuity and theatrical brilliance. It goes to show that state of the art special effects and the hottest Hollywood actors aren't needed to produce a quality film. Before I started writing this entry, I was watching some television. The movie Van Helsing was on. The special effects of this movie are spectacular, but the movie was not able to capture my attention and imagination the way The Cat People was.

Both mise-en-scene and mise-en-shot are very important contributors to the quality of the film. First, I'll concentrate on mise-en-scene. The biggest decision Lewton and Tourneur made was to not show Irena as a cat until the very end of the picture. The way they portrayed her using shadows and sound was brilliant. The two most celebrated scenes of the movie, the pool scene and the bus scene, are excellent, but one of my favorite touches comes shortly after the bus scene. You see the dead sheep (I believe), then you see paw prints which turn into heel prints. This was a brilliant way to show Irena as a fission character changing from a cat back to a woman. The set design also was no mistake. Cats were everywhere, especially in Irena's apartment. The statue of King John with the cat on his sword was especially significant for me. I felt a sense of foreboding as this statue was shown so prominently in the film (eventually Irena dies from Dr. Judd's cane-sword). The use of lighting and shadows are very important to the film. The lighting for the most part is very low and dark, which enhances the important use of shadows. What allowed them to get away with not showing the cat (until the end) was the use of shadows. The use of shdows in the pool scene, bus scene, and the struggle with Dr. Judd are brilliant. The shadows along with the growling/breathing of the cat and the reactions from the actors (ex. Alice's scream in the pool) have a greater effect on the audience then if we had actually seen a cat. These are a couple apects of the mise-en-scene excellence accomplished by Lewton & Tourneur.

The mise-en-shot style we see in the film is one that for the most part we don't see in our current day horror films. For the most part, today, we see fast paced films that try to shock the audience. The Cat People has a subtleness to it that enhances the quality of the film. We see a lot of long shots and deep focus photography. The movie was not edited to be fast paced and shocking (like we see today). The mise-en-shot aspect of the movie does not distract the audience, it helps to enhance the characters and the plot.

As I said earlier, I was wary of the quality of The Cat People. It just sounds like a corny movie, and given its many production limitations, I had doubts as to its quality. However, I could not have been more wrong. I really enjoyed this movie and respect and admire what Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur were able to accomplish given their studio limitations.