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Susan Langdon 042267803

HA3463: B-Films and Serials


A Case Study of Jacques Tourneurs Cat People (1942): to psychoanalyse or not to Psychoanalyse?
Directed by Jacques Tourneur, produced by Val Lewton, and written by De Witt Bodeen, Cat People (1942) was shot in seventeen days, ahead of schedule and under budget at $134,000.1 Paul Kerr mentions in his article on the B film noir, that at the beginning of the 1940s the budgets of RKOs most important production unit in the B sector were approximately $150,000 per picture, meaning Cat People was completed fairly cheaply even by B film standards.2 Made on such tight resources, the films purpose was to compensate for the extravagance of Orson Welless Citizen Kane (1941). Newman also states that Cat People acted as a compensation to the previously released Wolf Man (1941) starring Lon Chaney Jr: A double billing of the wolf man and Cat People suggests that the latter was developed as an answer to the former, at once cashing in on the earlier film and providing a corrective to its less successful aspects. Instead of having the monster become human again once dead, Lewton and Tourneur reverse it, turning Irena into a panther when she dies at the end. 3 The final scene closes with the realised version of the speared panther, an echo of the closing image from the first scene.4

Kim Newman warns that the film cannot strictly be called a B: Lewtons horror films were always intended to be modestly-budgeted A features and to go out at the top of

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Newman, Kim, Newman, Kim, Cat People (British Film Institute: London, 1999), p13. Kerr, Paul, Out of What Past? Notes on the B Film Noir in Film Noir Reader, eds. Alain Silver and James Ursini, (Limelight Editions: New York, 1993), p113. 3 Newman, P11. 4 Note the positioning of Irenas body on the spot where she meets Oliver and we catch our first glimpse of her secret this time the image is real rather than sketched.

Susan Langdon 042267803 double bills.5 Nevertheless, director Jacques Tourneur is often lauded as a good example of artistic flair under financial constraints as we find, for example, in Robin Woods article The Shadow Worlds of Jacques Tourneur.6 There are conflicting reports as to how the film came into being, but Bodeen and Tourneur both suggest that the title was imposed on the film from the outset by Charles Koerner, head of RKO. They also agree that originally it was planned to be a period film based on Algernon Blackwoods Ancient Sorceries, but Tourneur suggests that it was he not Lewton (as Bodeen states) who initiated the change in setting:
At first, Bodeen wrote Cat People as a period thing but I argued against that. I said if youre going to have horror, the audience must be able to identify with the characters in order to be frightened. Now you can identify with an average guy like me, but how can we identify with a lower Slobovian or a fellow with a big cape?7

This establishment of the normal setting both cut costs and contributes to a haunting atmosphere in which the familiar is juxtaposed with the supernatural to produce an uncanny atmosphere. We also find this element in the use of pre-existing Hollywood sets, such as the zoo (an important site in the film) which is recycled from an EstaireRogers film, and the stairwell to Irenas apartment, commented on by Oliver, I never cease to be amazed by what lies behind a brownstone front, acknowledges its previous use in Orson Welless The Amazing Ambersones (1942).8

In the presentation of its central character, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), Cat People deals with the marginal: the border between American and Serbian, human and animal, good and evil. She attributes her dual existence to a fictional Serbian legend of a tribe of women who lived in the mountains around her home village and would turn into cats if overcome by passion, She relates this to Oliver when he asks
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Newman, p7. Wood, Robin, The shadow worlds of Jacques Tourneur in Personal Views: Explorations in Film, (Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 2006). 7 Newman, pp. 9-10. 8 Kerr, p114.

Susan Langdon 042267803 her why they have never kissed and he responds by telling her that these are fairy tales, and have nothing to do with her, because she is marrying him and is therefore American and normal. It is this clash of cultures and the apparent blindness of the characters to the problems of this (as highlighted in Deborah Lindermans essay) that causes the tragedy.9

The film itself falls outside of genres in many respects, as I discussed previously it does not fall neatly within the category B-film nor A-film, but to add to its marginal status it is also difficult to call it a horror film. In her essay, Darkness Within: or, The Dark Continent of Film Noir, Ann Kaplan places Cat People as a classic film noir,10 yet it is important to remember that this was marketed, and consequently received, as a horror film at the time of its release. It is not something Tourneur necessarily wished to be associated with, however:
I hate the expression horror film, Jacques Tourneur said. For me, I make films about the supernatural because I believe in it. I believe in the power of the dead, witches. I even met a few when I was preparing Curse of the Demon. I had a long conversation with the oldest witch in England about the spirit world, the power of cats.I happen to possess some powers myself11

Whether or not Tourneur is exaggerating, the film approaches the supernatural in some ingenious ways that do suggest a level of respect for the authenticity of its subject matter. The supernatural is pitted against the logical in this case the psychoanalytic in the narrative, causing its effect as a horror film to hinge on the unseen and the unknown: aspects of the film noir. Right up until the moment Irena follows Alice (Jane Randolph) along the underpass there is a question mark over what the truth might be. Without showing us the transformation, the rhythmic alternation of

Linderman, Deborah, Cinematic Abreaction: Tourneurs Cat People in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, (Routledge: London, 1990) p83. 10 Kaplan, Darkness Within: Or, The Dark Continent of Film Noir in Looking for the Other: Feminism, film, and the imperial gaze, (Routledge: London, 1997) p99. 11 Newman, p10.

Susan Langdon 042267803 tracking shots that cut between Alice and Irena in the build-up, the suggestion of a shadow in the bushes, the dead sheep, and the paw prints that turn into footsteps, all act as clues. As the film progresses these signs become gradually more explicit, culminating in her final transformation which is suggested by a combination of gradual movement of the camera and laborious post-production treatment of the film to put Irenas face into shadow.12 We recognise the transformation as having taken place off-screen when Dr Judd pulls sharply back in shock. As the lamp clatters to the floor the apartment is transformed into a distorted world of shadowy images and drama.

Interestingly, the structure of this positions it as almost an anti-noir: here we have a mystery, the protagonist of which seems to wish the resolution. Yet Irena does not divulge everything. Her lapses of memory seem to spill over into her human moments as well, and part of the hermeneutic code of the film is that Irena frequently withholds information, both from characters within the film (Oliver, most frequently) and also from the audience. This blurring of cat and woman occurs in the swimming pool scene. The direction in this second encounter with the cat-form of Irena makes clever use of the swimming pool to illustrate tension. The water reflected on the ceiling calms as Alice freezes in the centre of the pool, and provides a sheet of light against which to impose the shadowy image of the panther. The only things we have to go on in this scene are the shadowy image accompanied by growling noises, the terror on Alices face, and disturbance in the reflected water as she panics until Irena switches on the light. It is this moment in which Irena seems to savour her moment of predatorin-human-form. Intimidatingly leaning over the steps, she prevents Alice from getting

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Newman, p59.

Susan Langdon 042267803 out while Irena asks the question of where she might find Oliver (the answer to which is obviously at home).

Deborah Lindermans article, Cinematic Abreaction: Jacques Tourneurs Cat People proposes a reading of the film that splits it into two heterogeneously inflected paradigms. Paradigm A concerns the psychiatrist doctor Judd and the men who try to control Irena, and paradigm B concerns the cinematic devices that assert control over her fate.
Something in the film's narrative or imagery seems to activate a dazzling hermeneutic forcefield [sic] that ineluctably shapes subsequent readings by compelling either acquiescence or active (though not necessarily acknowledged) resistance to a psychoanalytic method. This forcefield has produced some stimulating readings; but it has also proved limiting, causing a certain blindness in those caught between its magnetic poles. 13

In his article, What Alice Does: Looking Otherwise at The Cat People, John Berks sums up previous scholarship on Cat People, which he concludes glaringly omits the essential analysis of the role of Alice in the film. Berkss argument is that Alice, through her symbolic affinity with water and the working woman, plays out the ideology of Second World War American society and its need for female workers. It strikes me that in his article John Berks makes an essential faux-pas in assessing the use of psychoanalysis in Cat People and its subsequent discourses. He suggests that the film activates a dazzling hermeneutic forcefield [ sic], that catches opinion between its magnetic poles causing blindness to Alices importance. Moreover, that he suggests there is some Odysseus-like glory in resisting the sirens of psychoanalysis and its seductive powers is itself possibly the most limiting and blinding way of viewing the film, and warrants psychoanalysing in itself. I agree with Karen Hollingers remarks in response to this article that the argument he puts
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Berks, John, What Alice Does: Looking Otherwise at The Cat People in Cinema Journal, 32, No. 1,

Fall 1992, p26.

Susan Langdon 042267803 forward is tenuous, particularly in its citation of Alice bonding with other working women and Irenas failure to do so. My argument is that the purpose of this is not to place her as a domesticated creature but to maintain her position as an outsider, a foreigner aligned with blackness and otherness.

Cat People (1942) begins its first scene as a boy-meets-girl love story, but the mise en scne produces the effect of encapsulating the more sinister narrative of the film quickly and effectively. A thorough analysis of this holds the key to the unfolding of the film: as the scene fades out on Irenas discarded drawing of the speared panther, several markers of what follows are in place.

For Deborah Linderman, Irenas ambivalence toward littering and Olivers relayed gaze to the sign unmistakably designate her as a despoiler. 14 The sign, Let no one say, and say it to your shame/ That all was beauty here, until you came, is, I would argue, a central aspect of this establishing scene. When Oliver first draws attention to it, it is fairly unremarkable, but when he reminds Irena a second time, it hangs like an ominous prophesy over the blossoming relationship. If we take the girl by the ice cream stand to be Alice, the seemingly inconsequential sign and its context present us with another reading.15

As Oliver will later tell us, he is drawn to Irena (her girly aim and maintained gaze are all it takes to lure him away). However, just before Oliver tells us this during his heart-to heart with Alice in the office, he also tells us: Yknow, Ive never been unhappy before Thats why I dont know what to do about all of this, Ive just
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Linderman, P77. Newman suggests this is Alice, although most acknowledge that since we cannot see her face it could be just about anyone. Clearly, whoever this is, her function in this scene is to demonstrate the compulsion that draws Oliver to Irena.

Susan Langdon 042267803 never been unhappy before.16 That Oliver is drawn to Irena while referring to the sign acts as a precursor of what is about to unfold, while it also positions Irena as the disrupting potential (which she fulfils) for the destruction of harmony and balance, the (Aristotelian) beauty that was there before she came into Olivers life. Both parties choose to ignore this sign, and the unheeded warning in the symbolic form of the torn drawing assumes its position as the encapsulating motif of the film. The shadow of the zoo cage bars cast are echoed at the end of the next scene, this time falling on Irena as she tells Oliver he is her first real friend as they stand in front of her apartment door.

There are many such richly layered visual clues and effects throughout the film, and the use of light is one of the main features that sets the film apart from classic horror. In Doctor Judds office when being psychoanalysed, the lighting of Irenas face is extraordinary. The extreme chiaroscuro highlights the act of looking at her and for the only time in the film, robs her of her gaze and turns her into an object of desire. Throughout the film it is only with Dr Judd that Irena is screened as the object of desire, and it is in this respect that she occupies some form of subversive ness. Yet I disagree with Kaplan in her suggestion that: Irenas subversive ness her destabilisation of normal male-female power relations requires the films stabilising white/black race hierarchies and positions.17 In terms of the race hierarchy, Irenas foreignness forms one aspect of this while her duality as human/animal hybrid forms the other. Kaplans argument is that Irena represents a fear of blackness, that blackness is reinscribed in her panther form.

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This marks a shift in the narrative: sympathy begins to lie more with Irena. Kaplan, E. Ann, The "Dark Continent" of Film Noir - Race, Displacement and Metaphor in Cat People and The Lady from Shanghai, in Women in Film Noir (rev and expanded edition), ed. E. Ann Kaplan (BFI: London, 1998) p190.

Susan Langdon 042267803 The central question, then, of whether or not psychoanalysis can be applied to Cat People successfully can be answered yes. Despite Berkss proclaimed respect for psychoanalysis there is a certain amount of scorn in his article that fails to adequately explore what the term actually encompasses. Embodied in the form of Dr Judd, the films psychoanalysis is presented as scientific, logical. Yet as Ann Kaplan argues, it is precisely because psychoanalysis is not a science that it is useful. As in any scholarship, the tendency is to adopt a useful framework of analysis and deconstruct the film according to it. In this respect, Cat People is no more inhibitive of psychoanalytic readings than any other Hollywood film: this is simply the framework through which its underlying messages can be understood. The plot itself does not resist a psychoanalytic reading because for all its apparent self-awareness, it remains ideologically grounded enough within the Hollywood system to carry forth a coherent series of concepts, sublimated or not. Were it otherwise, the film could not have been the financial and ideological success it was.

Susan Langdon 042267803

Annotated Bibliography
Newman, Kim, Cat People (British Film Institute: London, 1999) The BFI companion to Cat People proved very useful in providing an introduction to writing about film in detail. The chronological approach (which I decided against in this case study for the sake of structuring an argument) made it easy to follow, and when looking for a general overview in the early stages of planning my essay this book was a valuable tool for familiarising myself with the film when the image itself was not in front of me. It is easy to read and use for reference, and it gave me more grounding in the films production than any other source. Berks, John, What Alice Does: Looking Otherwise at The Cat People, Cinema Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 26-42, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225860, date accessed: 20/11/08 This article is confusing. Berkss reference to the seduction of psychoanalysis and particularly his reference of Tom Gunning seem guilty of the exact same charge he puts to Telotte: i.e. that of confusing the psychoanalytical interpretation presented in Dr. Judd (Irenas repressed sexuality), with an actual psychoanalytical interpretation, Rather than addressing the issue of whether the psychoanalysis portrayed in the film is actually psychoanalysis at all. I found Karen Hollingers response to his summary of her essay interesting, and the summary of previous scholarship on the film was helpful for research, but I was unable to gain access to as much of the material as I would have liked. Linderman, Deborah, Cinematic Abreaction: Tourneurs Cat People in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (Routledge: London, 1990), pp. 73-87. This article was very useful in gaining a reading that made sense of the dualism taking place in the plot. I found Lindermans a convincing argument regarding the unfolding use of the psychoanalytic foil in the film. In her construction of the two paradigms we find some clarity as to the ways in which the film works to set up and then to undermine a supposedly psychoanalytic reading of Irenas behaviour, while revealing the subtexts created in the process. The vocabulary is not easy, however, and there is a tendency to overcomplicate.

Susan Langdon 042267803

Bibliography
Hollinger, K, on John Berks's What Alice Does: Looking Otherwise at The Cat People, Cinema Journal, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 55-57. Kaplan, E. Ann, The "Dark Continent" of Film Noir - Race, Displacement and Metaphor in Cat People and The Lady from Shanghai, in Women in Film Noir (rev and expanded edition), ed. E. Ann Kaplan (BFI: London, 1998). Kaplan, E. Ann, Darkness Within: Or, The Dark Continent of Film Noir, in Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze, (Routledge: London, 1997). Kerr, Paul, Out of What Past? Notes on the B Film Noir, in Film Noir Reader, eds. Alain Silver; James Ursini, (Limelight Editions: New York, 1993). Wood, Robin, The Shadow Worlds of Jacques Tourneur, in Personal Views: Explorations in Film, (Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 2006).

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