Cat People (1942)

 

When the modes of horror and noir crossed paths in the cinematic 'golden age' there is a partnership that is very notable for bringing style and depth to the conjunction and that is comprised of the director Jacques Torneur (1904 - 1977) and producer Val Lewton (1904 - 1951).
Working for RKO in the early 1940s they created three classics of black and white era Horror-Noir those being the subject of this post Cat People (1942), I Walked With A Zombie (1943) and The Leopard Man (1943). 

Starring Simone Simon as a European emigre to America, named Irena Dubrovna. The film pursues the premise of how Irena is subject to a curse that has befallen the scattered descendants of a Serbian village for generations. It is her fear that if she becomes physically intimate with another person she will transform into a cat person who would slay their lover and others who may have crossed her path.
We first encounter her as a lonely sketch artist who regularly visits the panther cage in New York's Central Park Zoo. Here she is approached by a marine engineer named Oliver Reed (played by Kent Smith) and despite her fears, an attraction develops between them. Relationships however don't just require an ancient curse of  theriomorphy to get complicated. The presence of Oliver's work assistant Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) and Irena's psychiatrist Dr Louis Judd (Tom Conway) add jealousy and confusion to the mix.

Though in hindsight it is always easier to read more into a movie's subtext, Cat People does in addition to telling an eerie tale, reflect other fears and issues - the situation of being an 'Other' symbolised in the character of Irena - she is a foreigner abroad, a person from a rural superstitious culture who finds herself in the modern metropolis of New York, she has fears of expressing a physical and emotional passion (at this time homosexuality/bisexuality was not generally depicted on screen in a forthright manner and was culturally a hidden love for many. Though Irena is not gay, she has an amour that she fears needs repressing). She is sent off to a psychiatrist which questions whether her fears are irrational, a mental illness or is she indeed the carrier of a curse. 

The cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca makes Cat People a beautiful film and whilst it is not scary to a modern audience it has its moments of dread and eeriness.