The Insert Shot: Cat People
Val Lewton's Debut Set The Standard for Female-Driven Horror Films
By Tom Houseman
December 6, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Fear in almost all horror films is driven by two ideas: what we don't know and what we can't control. Whether it is a masked serial killer, a piece of technology that gains sentience, or any number of ghosts, ghouls, and goblins that do not need to obey the laws of physics, it is the things we do not understand, that we cannot predict, that have more power over us than we have over them, that terrify us the most. And when it is our own body that fits that description, that behaves in ways we do not understand and cannot control, it is even scarier.
Many horror directors have understood how scary our own sexuality can be, how little control we can have over our own bodies and our own brains, and the effect that this lack of control can have on our psyches. And because horror films are overwhelmingly made by men and for a male audience, female sexuality is particularly terrifying. There is nothing scarier to a teenage boy than the female body, which stirs in him a combination of desire and embarrassment that is completely unlike anything else. From the paean to rape that is Alien to the more direct threat of a fanged vagina in Teeth, women and their strange lady parts bring out goosebumps in teenage boys who do not understand either.
One of the earliest films to diagnose and exploit this fear was Cat People, the debut film of producer Val Lewton, the pioneer of the “B” horror movie. Lewton produced low-budget horror films that made enormous amounts of money, a strategy that is still in use today. He also made some of the most definitive horror films of the '40s, including The Ghost Ship, The Body Snatcher, and Isle of the Dead. But his first film, Cat People, includes some of his most iconic moments, and is one of the first films that clearly understands just how scary female sexuality can be.
The film's protagonist is Oliver (Kent Smith), a good American man who works as an architect and admits that he's always been happy. While spending a day at the zoo Oliver meets Irena (Simone Simon), a beautiful Serbian immigrant who is drawing a portrait of a large black panther. Oliver chats up Irena, and while he never gets to see the picture, he does get himself invited over for tea. Irena crumbles up her work, but we get to see that she has drawn the panther being stabbed through the stomach by a large sword.
At Irena's apartment she reveals to Oliver some of her backstory, most notably the diabolical history of her people. Irena has a statue of King John, who came to Serbia to find that the formerly Christian villagers had fallen into sin, begun worshipping false idols, and had even engaged in witchcraft. King John was able to convert or destroy many of the sinners, but some of the witches disappeared into the mountains and were never caught. King John also killed the panthers that were in the village, since according to Irena, the panther “represents the evil ways into which my people had fallen.”
Almost immediately we are shown Irena's internal conflict, which will drive the plot of the film. It is very clearly a struggle driven by her sexuality, although considering this film came out in 1942 it is all handled very chastely (especially compared to the 1982 incest-packed remake starring Natassja Kinski and Malcom McDowell). Irena is both terrified of and drawn to the panther, which represents sin and evil, specifically the sin and evil of her uncontrollable sexuality. Living close enough to the zoo allows Irena to hear the animals at night, and while she enjoys the sounds of the other large cats, she says of the panther: “He screams like a woman. I don't like that.”
Irena is clearly trying to fight her sexuality, to fight the panther inside of her. She wants to kill it, to stab it with a sword (which we can virtually always assume represents a penis, since it is, after all, a giant sharp phallus made for inserting into other people). And yet over and over again she returns to the panther at the zoo, unable to resist its pull. In a moment of weakness she even literally feeds it, bringing a dead bird to the panther for it to devour. Similarly, she is unable to resist the dangerous lust inside of her, so while she tries to starve it and fight it, on a certain level she understands that she will inevitably succumb to it.
Oliver quickly falls in love with Irena despite her attempts to fend off his advances. She does not even let him kiss her, and when he proposes to her she tells him that she had intentionally isolated herself as a way to avoid this type of situation. She understands that there is a part of her that is dangerous, and if she indulged her lust with even a kiss it would emerge and take control of her. Oliver, of course, believes that Irena's stories are based on unfounded superstition and that someday she will be able to tell these “fairy tales” to their children.
Irena's concerns are based on very real fears shared by many men and women, especially those who are uncomfortable with their own sexuality. The condemnation of sexual urges is less prevalent today than it was in the more repressed 1940s, but people, especially women, who indulge their urges are still attacked and criticized. As a result, many people are afraid of their own sexuality, and the idea of people consumed by their own insatiable urges lives on. Of course, since this is a horror movie the fear has to be about something more sensational and dangerous than simple sexual desire, which is why Irena fears that not only will she lose control of herself, but she will transform into a ferocious panther.
The film presents this dangerous sexuality as something innate and unstoppable, a threat that Irena is born with and cannot overcome. Every animal - with the exception of the panther - is terrified of her, and the bird that she feeds to the panther died of fright when she tried to pick it up. Many people believe that animals can sense things that humans cannot, and Irena's evil nature, hidden by her beautiful exterior, is revealed to the animals. Other Cat People also recognize the power inside of her that she tries to keep in check. At Irena and Oliver's engagement party a mysterious beautiful woman walks up to Irena and addresses her in Serbian. Irena admits that the woman was calling her “my sister,” and we are meant to infer that this is another of the Cat People, and that she sees in Irena a kindred spirit.
Sexuality and lust is shown to be dangerous and deadly, but Cat People specifically focuses on female desire as something that transforms women into monsters, and depicts men as victims of these literal femme fatales. There are stereotypes regarding sexuality that relates specifically to one gender or the other, and it is more common that men are seen as unable to control their urges, and women are depicted as prudish, or even frigid. But women are also often shown as being unable to control their emotions or to resist temptation, as capricious and prone to outbursts of passion. That is the idea that Cat People uses to show Irena's monstrous side.
When Irena is put under hypnosis by Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), a psychologist, she admits all of her fears. She describes her ancestors as “Women who in jealousy or anger or out of their own corrupt passions can change into great cats, like panthers.” Women in fiction are often shown as being driven by jealousy and losing control of themselves when they are overcome by anger or lust. Irena fears that if she were so much as kissed by a man that “she would be driven by her own evil to kill him.” Later Irena tells Oliver that as long as she is happy she can control herself, but anger and rage, and the panther, are bubbling beneath the surface.
There is certainly an aspect of xenophobia that plays into the film, and I doubt it is a coincidence that the Cat Woman unable to control her sexuality is Serbian. This heavily plays into both jingoistic fears that foreign women are out to steal our men, and Puritan prejudice concerning European women, all of whom are suspected of being hedonistic harlots. As a contrast to Irena's dangerous seduction we are shown Alice (Jane Randolph), a traditional American girl who works in Oliver's office and admits that she is in love with him. We are meant to view her as the moral, chaste woman whom Oliver should marry.
When Oliver asks Alice how she defines love, she has a quaint, Capra-esque speech prepared: “It's understanding... It's the two of us living our lives together happily and proudly. No self-torture, no doubt. It's enduring and it's everlasting. Nothing can change it.” Oliver admits that he doesn't feel that way about Irena, but that he finds her irresistible in a very different way. “I'm drawn to her. There's a warmth from her that pulls at me. I have to watch her when she's in the room. I have to touch her when she's near. But I don't really know her. In many ways we're strangers.” It is obvious that what Oliver is describing is not love, but lust, that dangerous passion that turns us into savage animals, sometimes literally.
But while Oliver constantly assures Irena that her fears are unfounded and hyperbolic, her warnings turn out to be prescient. As tension develops in his relationship with Irena, Oliver begins spending more time with the comforting Alice, although of course they do nothing prurient or improper. But when Irena sees the two of them having a perfectly innocuous conversation she gives in to her anger and jealousy. Irena finally becomes the Cat Woman that has been lurking inside of her and attacks Alice in a swimming pool. Fortunately for Alice, her screams attract attention and she is saved from being mauled to death.
Cat People uses the idea of the dangerous, lust-driven female to subvert our idea of a sexual predator. Typically men are seen as the predators, making advances on chaste women push them away. But when Irena runs into Dr. Judd shortly after attacking Alice and he attempts to seduce her, the roles are reversed. Dr. Judd may seem like a sexual predator here, but we now know that by inciting her lust he will be turning himself into the prey. And he is truly predatory in the way he approaches her and kisses her, but he is the one who is attacked, as their kiss once against transforms her into a Cat Woman. Attempting to defend himself with a sword, Dr. Judd is unable to fend off the ferocious panther, and is killed. This reinforces the notion of the woman whose sexuality drives her to madness and violence, destroying anybody who gets in her way.
Not surprisingly, Christianity is presented in the film as both the antithesis of the Cat People and a way to defeat them. Irena explains to Oliver that the Cat People first came into existence when her ancestors denounced Christianity and gave in to their most abject desires, including worshipping false idols. It was the Christian King John who was able to defeat them and save what was left of the village. This idea fits very neatly into the belief that Christianity represents proper moral values and that those who fall from it become base, monstrous creatures steeped in depravity.
Many monsters and demons, especially those associated with the sin of lust, are seen as combatting Christian values, and often symbolic Christian tools can be used as weapons against them. When Irena is confronted by her Serbian “sister” she crosses herself in response, clearly understanding that Christianity could be her only salvation. Later, when Irena has transformed into a Cat Woman, she endeavors to attack Oliver and Alice, but when Oliver holds up a cross she is rendered powerless, unable to get close to them, and she flees.
Eventually Irena is destroyed by her own curse and killed by the evil that she is drawn to. After attempting to kill Oliver and Alice, Irena goes back to the zoo and unlocks the door to the panther's cage. The panther charges out and pounces on her, killing her, before running off. Irena feared the animal inside of her, fought to subdue it or keep it at bay, yet was drawn to it, drawn as much to the lust inside of herself as she was to the panther at the zoo. And when she could not fight any longer, both the inner and outer manifestations of evil become her undoing.
Cat People presents the idea that some women have this evil inside of them, this lust, anger, and jealousy, that can turn them into vicious, uncontrollable animals who will destroy any man they desire and any woman who gets in their way. The dangerous woman who consumes men is a common trope in many genres, but horror films allow her to take a more literal form by turning her into an actual monster, an alien, a demon, or a wild animal. Cat People was one of the forerunners of this story trope, providing a guidebook that combined misogyny, xenophobia, and the upholding of Christian values as its key ingredients, and set the tone for horror films for years to come.