Cinema
Cat People
Jacques Tourneur · 1942
Synopsis
At the Central Park zoo, Irena Dubrovna, a fashion illustrator born in Serbia, sketches a panther; Oliver Reed, a naval engineer, approaches her. They marry, but Irena refuses herself to him: she believes a curse hangs over the women of her village, who turn into wild beasts under the force of desire. Oliver sends her to a psychiatrist, Dr Judd. Alice Moore, who works with Oliver, confesses her love for him; one evening, while crossing Central Park, she hears footsteps behind her.
Context
RKO's management gave Lewton a title and a budget, around which he had to build a film; the title was imposed on him by Charles Koerner, and Lewton was uncomfortable with it. The budget was about 135,000 dollars, for takings that the sources place between one and four million. The film is said by some to have saved a studio that two Orson Welles films had put in difficulty. The critic Kim Newman sees in it a forerunner of the psychological horror of the sixties.
Who it is for
A seventy-three-minute film, in black and white, offered in its original version on the discs sold in France.
Prizes and reception
Entered in 1993 in the National Film Registry kept by the Library of Congress of the United States.
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