Cat People
Short description
Cat People follows Irena Dubrovna, a Serbian fashion designer living in New York, who meets the American naval engineer Oliver Reed at the zoo and marries him after a brief courtship. Irena believes an old legend from her home village: that women like her, descended from practitioners of witchcraft, turn into a predatory cat when they give in to physical intimacy, and that she would therefore harm the man she loves. She withholds affection from her husband, and shortly after the wedding a stranger addresses her as "my sister." As Irena's behaviour grows more troubled, Oliver turns to the psychiatrist Dr. Judd for help while confiding in his friend Alice, and Irena's jealousy puts Alice in danger.
The film was directed by Jacques Tourneur, the first of his features in the chronological list of his work, from a screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen, and produced by Val Lewton for RKO Radio Pictures. Simone Simon plays Irena, with Kent Smith as Oliver, Tom Conway as Dr. Judd and Jane Randolph as Alice. Running 73 minutes, it is a horror, mystery and romance picture that returned about 4 million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 7.2/10 from roughly 28,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9/10 from just under 700 votes. A film critics' rating of 8.4/10 from 72 reviews places critical assessment clearly above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- As the film progressed, there was initially no intention of showing Irena transformed into a beast. When studio supervisor Lou Ostrow demanded that a panther appear in the corresponding scenes, Jacques Tourneur refused to comply, and Ostrow ordered the director to be fired. Val Lewton managed to smooth over the scandal by filming a scene with an attacking panther, but with reduced lighting, and ultimately it was completely impossible to discern the beast among the shadows on the screen.
- The film stayed in theaters for so long that some critics, who had initially lambasted it, watched it again and revised their reviews to be more positive.
- In 1993, the film was added to the U.S. National Film Registry as being of great artistic significance.
- This film was the first to introduce the technique of building tension that doesn't lead to a frightening event, but fizzles out. This technique has since become known in Hollywood as a "bus jump scare," as seen in a scene from 'Cat People' where Alice walks down a night street, the audience hears a hissing sound like a cat’s and anticipates a panther attack, but the sound turns out to be the noise of an approaching bus.
- The film's advertising slogan was the phrase "Kiss me – I'll tear you to death!"
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
