Cat People
(1942) 73 Min.
Rated: G
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Stars: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★★
A woman believes that she will turn into a panther if she is kissed or touched intimately.
Synopsis:
Irena (Simon) and Oliver (Conway) meet while Irena is sketching a panther at the zoo. He remarks that he’s never met an artist before and she explains that she is a fashion sketch artist. She walks off with Oliver and a drawing lying on the ground is a picture of a panther with a knife through it.
The pair walk to her apartment and she invites him in for tea. Oliver sees a statue which Irena explains is of King John of Serbia. The sword is lancing a cat which Irena explains is dark times and witchcraft. Irena believes that the witches escaped into the mountains around her village. The couple spend more time together.
Soon Oliver tries to get Irena a pet kitten, but the kitten hisses at Irena. The two turn it in for a bird instead. Oliver and Irena spend even more time together and fall in love, but Irena explains she spent most of her time trying not to fall in love. Irena truly believes she is cursed. Oliver tells her he will do anything for her and intends to marry her.
At the wedding party a mysterious woman with a bit of feline features walks over to the wedding party and calls her sister. Irena is in shock, but Oliver dismisses it as one of Irena’s “Cat People” tales.
The newly wedded couple are dropped off at their home. Irena asks Oliver to be patient with her and not to rush their marital intimacy. Oliver promises to be patient.
Irena visits the panther in the zoo, she explains to a custodian that she’s been gone a month after getting married. Later she puts her hand in her pet bird’s cage and bats at it, until it dies. She then takes the bird and throws it into the panther’s cage at the zoo.
Irena explains to Oliver what happens and Oliver decides that she’ll see a psychiatrist.
Under hypnosis Irena divulges that she believes that if she’s intimate in any way with Oliver she will turn into a big cat and devour him. She also tells her psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Judd, (Conway) that her father died under mysterious circumstances in a forest before she was born and the village children called her mother cat lady.
Irena comes home to find Oliver talking with Alice, his co-worker, (Randolph). Irena is offended that the two have discussed her behind her back. Irena goes out that night to pace back and forth with the panthers in their cages at the zoo.
At work, Oliver confides in Alice about his marital problems and Alice in turn confides that she’s in love with Oliver. Oliver is so unhappy and starts to doubt his love for Irena. Irena stopped visiting the psychiatrist after the first visit.
Oliver and Irena almost quarrel again. Oliver decides to go to work but instead ends up at a nearby café. Alice happens to meet him at the café and the two discuss his problems with Irena, meanwhile Irena has found the two in the café, but she waits in the dark.
When Alice and Oliver part ways, Irena follows Alice. The foggy night is quiet and click-clack of heels is the only sound heard as Alice rushes homeward, sensing that someone is following her. Luckily, she is saved by a bus and hops on.
Nearby at the zoo, some of the sheep have been killed and there are large paw prints in the mud. These tracks turn into high-heel prints. Irena appears, dazed and covered in filth. She takes a taxi home.
Irena takes a bath, cries and goes to bed. She has dreams about a conversation she had with a man at the zoo and the key to the panther’s cage. The next day she steals the panther’s cage key from the janitor.
The trio decide to go visit a museum, but Oliver and Alice tell Irena to go into another exhibit away from them. She complies, but wanders off. She follows Alice to a health club with a pool. The room is dark and Alice hears growling noises. She jumps into the pool and sees shadows that look like looming large cat shadows. She screams and Irena turns on the lights. Alice tells Irena that Oliver and her were wondering where she was. Irena leaves Alice alone and goes home. When Alice gets out of the pool she finds that her bathrobe is shredded.
Alice sees Dr. Judd and talks about Irena’s cat people story and how she feels it’s real. Alice even brings her shredded robe to show him. Dr. Judd dismisses it as stories but is willing to talk to Irena. Alice warns him to protect himself.
Dr. Judd talks to Irena and convinces her that it’s an illusion and that she has a very real chance of being locked away for being insane.
Irena goes home, confident that she won’t turn into a cat. Oliver, however, has already decided he’s in love with Alice and wants to divorce Irena. Irena tells him to go away, muttering to herself that the dark is comfort.
The next day Alice, Oliver and Dr. Judd discuss Irena. His advice is to get the marriage annulled. He also advises against locking Irena away because Oliver cannot divorce someone declared insane by law. They meet at Irena’s house but she is not there.
Later Oliver and Alice are working in their dark office and they get a mysterious phone call with no answer. Thena panther appears. Oliver holds up a t-square like a cross and invokes the name of God. The cat disappears and Oliver and Alice run out of the building.
They try to call Irena’s apartment where Dr. Judd is and he becomes distracted and hangs up when Irena arrives. Dr. Judd kisses Irena and she attacks him as a cat, killing him. Oliver and Alice arrive to find Dr. Judd dead. They try to catch Irena at the zoo, but it’s too late. She freed a panther, which jumped past her and got hit by a car. She, in turn, died and turned into her true form of a panther.
Review:
This film is full of cat motifs and symbolism. It has a heavy use of noir too. Long shadows and sounds are all we need to know that a dark and ferocious creature lurks about.
This film originated a often use trope in film where tension is built when the audience expects a person to be hurt or caught, but instead another misdirect pierces the tension.
Though sometimes a bit silly or impractical if looked through a modern point a view, it is pretty tense for it’s time, and I highly recommend this little thriller if you can stand a slow building plot.