Cat People (1942). 73 minutes. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Starring Simone Simon (as Irena Dubrovna Reed), Kent Smith (as Oliver Reed), Jane Randolph (as Alice Moore), and Tom Conway (as Dr. Louis Judd). Produced by Val Lewton.
For a B-grade horror movie about a woman who can transform into an animal, Cat People is a surprisingly sensitive and human story. This film achieves much more than we would expect from a typical B picture. In fact, it offers a mixture of subtlety, sophistication, and inventiveness that would be difficult for any movie to achieve. All throughout we hear the mysterious, part-feline protagonist Irena Dubrovna Reed articulate her loneliness, her need for warmth, and her fear that something evil resides within her. As she puzzles over her true nature, we watch her marriage to her newlywed husband Oliver deteriorate and see how its demise fuels her longing and isolation. It would appear that her relationship with Oliver is the only substantial … Read the rest