Cat People

Jacques Tourneur – 1942 – USA

• The first of seven spare, dreamlike thrillers made by producer Val Lewton for RKO in the 40s.  Some of those that followed were I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Seventh Victim (1943), The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945).

• Lewton was one of the few producer-auteurs in film history.  His films were crafted by him from start to finish and were infused with his personal interests, philosophy and autobiographical details.

• As seen in the images below, Lewton's films surely kindled film noir as much as Lang, Welles and  pulp novels.

• The Russian-born Lewton and the French director of his first three productions, Jacques Tourneur, layered Cat People and its successors with a European sophistication, existential dread, old-world folklore, Freudian theory, and the sobering implications of World War II.

• Lewton is the paradigm of the artist functioning in the commercial world.  No one expected anything but disposable B programmers from these films, but Lewton seized the opportunity to make something potent and memorable anyway, and succeeded.