Tourneur Films Tonight
Posted: October 5th, 2007, 10:19 am
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.
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.