Jacques Tourneur
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Connections, in both directions
Scorsese showed his actors the great 1947 noir " Out of the Past ," whose very title is a noir theme: Characters never arrive at a story without baggage.
It’s fun, in a film-school kind of way, to pick out the references: “Out of the Past,” “Laura,” “Isle of the Dead,” and so forth.
So it was that, armed with recent viewings of classic noir films of obsession like Laura, Crossfire, and Out of the Past—cut with yellow-journalist gut-punches like Shock Corridor and revelatory documentaries like Titicut Follies for verisimilitude—Scorsese took Dennis Lehane’s B-flick-inspired novel Shutter Island and made a real monster of a film.
CAT PEOPLE, original screen play by DeWitt Bodeen; directed by Jack Tourneur; produced by Val Lewton for RKO Radio Pictures.
So let's jump right into the first, most famous, and by most accounts best of the lot, 1942's Cat People , written by first-time screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen, and directed by Jacques Tourneur.
Having established dark possibilities, "Cat People" gives us daylight scenes and chirpy supporting characters who don't realize they're skirting danger.
The ending of the film is quite different than the ending of the original 1942 version of "Cat People."
Cat People is based on a 1942 horror film, but it is distinguished by substance and subtlety, not shock value.
Jacques Tourneur's immortal 1942 original version of Cat People is a wonderful exercise in the macabre.
There was also at that time Jacques Tourneur's remarkable horror film I Walked With a Zombie (1943), a transposition of Jane Eyre to the modern Caribbean where the Rochester character's mad wife becomes a victim of voodoo.
If you don't count I Walked With a Zombie, this is the 27th screen adaptation of Brontë's classic, the mother of all Gothic romances.
Relic (2020)
Directed by Natalie Erika James
influenced by The Leopard Man (1943), Cat People (1942)
Visuals
In league with recent items by Jennifer Kent and Ari Aster, James, like Rose Glass and Romola Garai, has concocted an art-house mood piece which recalls the 1940s era of Val-Lewton films, particularly those B-pictures directed by Jacques Tourneur, like Cat People (1942) or The Leopard Man (1943), which were predicated on horrific flights of fancy but depended upon imbalance and unease through the power of suggestion and the playful teasing of troubling imagery.
In league with recent items by Jennifer Kent and Ari Aster, James, like Rose Glass and Romola Garai, has concocted an art-house mood piece which recalls the 1940s era of Val-Lewton films, particularly those B-pictures directed by Jacques Tourneur, like Cat People (1942) or The Leopard Man (1943), which were predicated on horrific flights of fancy but depended upon imbalance and unease through the power of suggestion and the playful teasing of troubling imagery.
In this moment Get Out adds a new, unsettling image to the annals of the horror film—an image of black subjugation capable of recalling the sightless “undead” of Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton’s 1943 I Walked with a Zombie , while seeming to belong entirely to this movie and this moment.
The Ritual (2017)
Directed by David Bruckner
influenced by Night of the Demon (1957), Cat People (1942)
Visuals
I was also, though, strongly reminded of Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957; aka Curse of the Demon ).
While the central horror is fully revealed, there are some great shots of the trees waving and rustling while everyone waits in anticipation and fear—just as in the classic Night of the Demon (and also in Tourneur’s other classic horror film, 1942’s Cat People ).
There’s a fairly nail-biting confrontation sequence at a deserted swimming pool, and while I enjoyed the tension—and the echoes of Tourneur’s Cat People —I slightly regretted the shift away from a pensive, nervous register into an all-out showdown.
Bava’s film was one six that inspired Suspiria , the rest being Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), David Hand’s aforementioned Disney-produced Snow White And The Seven Dwarves (1937), Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942), Neorealism founders Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti, along Mauro Bolognini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Franco Rossi’s Le streghe ( The Witches, 1967), and Brian De Palma’s Phantom Of Paradise (1974), which Harper also starred in.
Buffs will notice a nod, too, to the classic "Curse of the Demon" (although Raimi doesn't repeat that film's mistake by ever showing his fiend too clearly).
A segment that involves chasing a little girl's ticket, which apparently has a mind of its own, is uncomfortably reminiscent of the hunt in Curse of the Demon for a parchment with runic symbols on it.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)
Directed by Rob Marshall
influenced by I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Themes
It does, I have to admit, tend to bog down in the seemingly infinite twists and bits of business leading up to the climax, and movie-overfed-critic types are likely to fondly recall the better movies, including " I Walked With a Zombie " and " The Princess Bride ," that this draws inspiration from.
There's a scene in the original " Cat People " (1942) where a woman goes swimming at an indoor pool after hours.
Even the famous shock in 1942's Cat People when the bus hisses into the frame would've been diluted if something like it had pierced the soundtrack every ten minutes.
Like horror classics ranging from Cat People (1942) to The Haunting (1963) to The Blair Witch Project (1999), it suggests its terrors rather than explicitly showing them, which leaves far more to the imagination and sends more genuine chills up the spine.
Zombieland (2009)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
influenced by I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Plot Themes
Zombie movies have been around for some time now, the greatest being the Val Lewton-Jacques Tourneur horror classic I Walked With a Zombie (1943), a reworking of Jane Eyre on a Caribbean island.
Zombies -- those disheveled, shuffling, flesh-eating masses -- are suddenly en vogue, from the planned record-setting zombie assembly at this year's Voodoo Experience in City Park, to last summer's movie " Pontypool " to the potential Hollywood South remake "I Walked With a Zombie."
The great femme fatales -- the characters played by Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity and by Jane Greer in Out of the Past to name just two -- have been the creations of men, irresistible dream girls onto which men can project their fears and longing.
On the other hand, it’s not difficult at that point to imagine him following up with Robert Mitchum’s immortal line from “Out of the Past”: “Baby, I don’t care.”
And there is a great shot of her enraptured by all the trouble she is causing as she watches too boys fight over her, just as Jane Greer did in Out of the Past Femme Fatale's DVD Potential De Palma has been enjoying proliferating DVD representation of late, and the Femme Fatale disc would give the "angry man" of cinema a chance to let off more steam, either via an audio track, or in video interviews.
Crimson Peak (2015)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
Themes
Del Toro, however, operates more in tune with B-movie producer Val Lewton, who used “Jane Eyre” to develop a darkly ambiguous take on the relationship between emotional duress and supernatural events in “I Walked With a Zombie,” a title forced on him by studio executives ahead of the 1943 production.
Oculus (2014)
Directed by Mike Flanagan
influenced by I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Cat People (1942)
Themes
Jacques Tourneur's Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) hinge on their heroines' dread of being vulnerable to sexual predators.
Jacques Tourneur's Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943) hinge on their heroines' dread of being vulnerable to sexual predators.