322 - Cat People, United States, 1942. Jacques Tourneur.
Oliver and Alice smell Irena's perfume.
It is called Lalage. It is "warm and living." Living, perhaps, the way a cat is living.
Uh-oh.
The doctor, Dr. Louis Judd, has felt some . . . claws.
Things have not worked out well for him.
Oliver and Alice leave the building, following the smell of the perfume.
Maybe Irena knows something.
Maybe she has done. Something.
Irena is from Serbia. She has come to America, where she designs fashions. She does not yet have any friends. She goes to the zoo to watch animals to inspire her drawings. While there she meets Oliver. He becomes her first friend. She invites him to tea.
King John is also from Serbia. Not the King John of the Magna Carta. But the King John of Serbia.
She keeps a statue of him in her apartment.
She explains.
"At first the people were good and worshiped God in a true Christian way, but little by little people changed. People bowed down to Satan and said their masses to him. They had become witches and were evil."
King John took care of that. He drove the Mamelukes out of Serbia and freed the people
Maybe her mother was descended from them.
Maybe . . . she . . .
Irena is afraid. She loves Oliver and does not wish to hurt him. She does everything she can do to be good and loving.
If only that strange, catlike, Serbian woman had not approached her at that dinner and called her Moja Sestra, "My Sister."
That did not encourage her.
Nor does the fact that she has the key to the panther cage hiding in her pocket. The zookeeper left it in the lock by mistake.
That scares her too.
With this film Jacques Tourneur launches his career as a director. Well, he had been working in the industry for twenty years, as an editor and assistant director, and as a director of short films. He had also directed features sporadically, and this is now his fifth feature in the past three years. But this is the one that puts him on the map. He will do nothing but direct features for the remainder of his career, and he will work in a variety of genres, including romantic comedy, religious drama, action adventure, war, mystery, thriller, horror, and Western.
From I Walked with a Zombie (1943) to Days of Glory (1944) to Stars in My Crown (1950) to The Flame and the Arrow (1950) to Appointment in Honduras (1953) to Wichita (1955).
And the great one. That film noir of films noir, Out of the Past (1947). Starring Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, and Richard Webb. I predict Criterion will issue it on their label before long.
And here is something important to know--
In Cat People Jacques Tourneur works with the same cinematographer that he will work with later in Out of the Past. Nicholas Musuraca. One of the giants of film noir photography.
Dark blacks. Deep shadows. High contrast lighting. Wide angles. Deep focus.
And their producer. Val Lewton. Who after starting as a writer and story editor (including on Gone with the Wind (1939)) is producing his first film, one of a string of hits that will keep RKO in the black and prospering. He works with Jacques Tourneur on a few in a row and with Musuraca on a few more.
Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness. - The Anatomy of Atavism, Dr. Louis Judd.
But black sin hath betrayed to endless night
My world, both parts, and both parts must die.
John Donne, Holy Sonnets, V.
Things might not work out for Irena.
She is a good woman, but she is afraid she is not good.
If she keeps giving voice to it, her fear may win.
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