Tourneur Films Tonight

[Mr. Arkadin]

Anyone want to discuss these? Here's an excerpt from something I wrote at my other site (most of those people have never seen these films so it's a bit basic) to get us started:

This Friday (10/5) TCM will be showing four of Tourneur’s works in celebration of Halloween. Let’s take a brief overview:



Cat People (1942)






The first Lewton/Tourneur collaboration, Cat People is the story of a beautiful Serbian girl living in America. Irena is concerned about her occult heritage in which sexually aroused women took on the shape of vicious panthers and leopards. She meets a nice man and marries him, but will not consummate their relationship for fear that she will be forever changed into a wild beast.



In this one small film, Tourneur dealt with murder, lust, sex and the carnal appetites of the body, yet did not break the Hays code! No monster is ever shown. Instead, we are treated to shadowy images, animal growls, objects or people who distract us on one side of the frame while another image enters from the opposite side. It’s an amazing slight of hand game, but Cat People is also a deep psychological work that pits the flesh against the spirit. Irena is terrified of her own body and it’s desires, which threaten to corrupt her good nature. She is married, but afraid to give herself to her husband for fear her lust will destroy him. In a day when sex is used to sell everything, Cat People asks serious questions about sex and chastity. Do we control our desires or do our desires control us?





I Walked with a Zombie (1943)







Best described as a horror version of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, this beautiful looking film is not so much about zombies, but the betrayal of love which is destructive to the soul and leaves one empty inside.



Betsy Connell a nurse, journeys to the Caribbean to tend Paul Holland’s wife, Jessica who is in a catatonic state as the result of a high fever. Betsy is drawn to Paul, but respects his relationship with his wife, and tries every kind of cure to reunite them. Finally out of options, she takes her patient on a midnight walk to Houmfort to seek help from voodoo practitioners. What happens next in a series of head-spinning twists, has to be seen to be believed.



This film has ample amounts of suspense, but also has beautiful cinematography. Check out Tourneur's contrasts of light and dark and the effective way he uses shadows. All the cast players give wonderful performances, creating a sublime and satisfying ending that is almost never seen in the horror genre.



The Leopard Man (1943)






Jerry Manning rents a leopard for a publicity stunt. When it escapes, a string of young girls are murdered. At first blame is attached to the animal, but as the murders grow more frequent, Jerry begins to suspect a human element has a hand in the deaths.



The Leopard Man is an early look at a theme which dominates all of horror today—the serial killer. In the thirties the ideal horror was a monster, but in the forties Lewton and Tourneur’s collaborations were showing us that the true monster lies in the mirror, fighting within us for dominance.



Again, violence is more suggested than shown. One hair-raising scene simply shows us a door. We hear a young girl screaming on the other side, then silence. By the time we see blood seeping underneath, we’re ready to run for the exits ourselves.



Curse of the Demon (1958)





Made over ten years after his collaborations with Val Lewton, Curse of the Demon has many unique attributes that separate it from Lewton’s work—namely the fact that a monster can actually be seen. Tourneur originally wanted something more subtle, but backers wanted the real deal so an actual demon was constructed out of foam rubber. In spite of this, Curse of the Demon is a very effective film and has the usual gorgeous photography and dreamy look of Tourneur’s previous work.



When John Holden, an American psychologist arrives in England to expose a satanic cult, he runs into much more than he bargained for. It seems that cult leader Dr. Julian Karswell, has placed a curse upon him, saying he will die in a few days. Holden shrugs this off as scare tactics, but events (including a friend’s demise) and circumstances slowly begin to fray his mind. A true believer now, Holden searches for a way out of the curse before it’s too late.



Curse of the Demon is one of the first (and few) films to deal with cult worship in a way that is truly threatening and yet doesn’t jump off the deep end and fall into campy humor. It’s a fine line, and Tourneur knows just how far to push us. Like Holden, we enter into the movie as skeptics and somewhere along the way fall under Tourneur’s spell.

[MissGoddess]

Good idea for a thread!

I love Val Lewton's movies, especially Cat People, Bedlam and I Walked with a Zombie. The last film inspired me to start a screenplay similar to its heart, or as you wrote so elegantly, about the betrayal of love which is destructive to the soul and leaves one empty within.

Cat People's "Irena" is a character I feel great empathy for. She is full of fears but they are met with skepticism by the man she was pushed to seek help from, Doctor Judd (fascinating character, who would turn up again in The 7th Victim) and even from her own husband. There has been interesting back-and-forth discussion in the TCM forums about how innocent "Alice" (Jane Randolph) really is.

I have to go out to dinner tonight, so I'll unfortunately miss watching them but I look forward to further discussion. And can anyone tell me when or if TCM is airing any kind of documentary on Lewton? I thought they had announced this earlier in the year but I haven't looked at the entire October schedule yet.

[Dewey1960]

The Tourneur films that TCM will be airing are nothing short of spectacular. For me, the most interesting one is THE LEOPARD MAN. One of the more interesting and disturbing aspects of it is its unwillingness to hold its protagonists accountable for the tragic occurrences they unwittingly unleash at the beginning of the story. Having seen this film many times, it really never dawned on me until perhaps the fifth or sixth viewing that Jerry Manning (Dennis O'Keefe), in today's overly zealous, politically correct climate, would undoubtedly be standing trial for -- at the very least -- reckless endangerment. Nonetheless, it is one of the finest noir films ever made, largely because of the unique contributions of its brilliant director, Jacques Tourneur.
I hope everyone appreciates Mr Arkadin's insightful heads up on this wonderful night of programming!!

[MikeBSG]

"Cat People" and "Curse of the Demon" are terrific, and I enjoy them each time I see them.

I go back and forth on "Leopard man" and "I Walked With a Zombie." "Leopard Man" has some great scenes, but the ending seems a bit lackluster. Still, my reaction to "I Walked" is all over the place. Some times I find it too genteel for its own good. Some times I like it, but I never rank it as one of my favorite Lewton films.

[vallo]

My DVR will be humming Tonight..

Thanks for the heads-up...



Bill(vallo)

[Mr. Arkadin]

My personal favorite of the four is I Walked with a Zombie. For me, acting, direction, camerawork, and plotline came together to make a perfect film that's as deep as it is entertaining. This is also one of the reasons I enjoy these films so much. They are not simple scare flicks. They require us to think and interact with the film and cannot work without audience participation.

Tourneur and Lewton took a bold step in assuming that the audience could reason, and chew over the unexplained using their mind instead of simply dumbing the films down to the lowest common demominator. In The Leopard Man, Dr. Galbriath uses Charlie the leopard owners own mind and morality against him (and later falls for the same trick himself). Tourneur does the same with us, creating works where our imagination, experiences, and personal fears provide the suspense. It's not what we see, rather it is skillful manipulation by the director of what we do not see.

I should mention that Cat People is given homage in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) where Kirk Douglas and his director pal make "The Cat Man" using Lewton and Tourneur's techniques (and even explaining them!) to great success--until they have to make "The Son of Cat Man".

[MissGoddess]

I love the allusions to Lewton's films in The Bad and the Beautiful. That was a nice "tip of the hat" by Minnelli.

I Walked with a Zombie really seduces me with its power---it is a curiously subtle film for so lurid a title. It certainly was not filmed in the West Indies but don't you think they did an excellent job of creating a humidly exotic atmosphere, pregnant with mystery and romance and fear?

I also love the music.