The Cat People

Today we watched Cat People, (1980) which was another film which paved the way for many other films to carry on from where they left of..

The cat people was a "film noir" which tend to specialise in using "light effects" to create a many feelings in the audience. Lighting to show importance to a certain obj/character, to bring suspense, or to emphasise a scary moment.

"The Cat People" is  film that uses 'the Horror of suggestion'.

The movie due to its low budget used orchestral music and lighting to make up for the finacial lack it had which made it a dramatical Hollywood 'B' Movie.

One of the men who worked on this move called Val Luten, actually had a phobia of cats and being touched and is a possible muse for the actual creator of the piece.

The movie used the greates tool for manipulating people's emotions, The power of suggestion no matter how subtle. Evidence where this has been used is when "Alice" was walking through a dark allyway and was being stalked by the main actress, she eventually got to bus stop and before we could see it the bus made a loud almost creature like roar before appering (which

 made me think "Alice" was about to be pounced on by a panther.





After the film we talked about hidden messages in the film and how it related to americans and immigrants and how they are treated, when they thought she was crazy her husband just moved on to a less "complicated" american girl and at the end when alice and the panther died they just walked away from her body without much care, they didn't even call the police.

It was only after our discussion did I realsie that all the 'Catpeople' were russians. I'm not sure why this is..
I did a little research on "America's attitude on Russians" which ranged between 1939 to 1945, and according to what Dyane Aycock wrote the americans felt distrust and unease from being allied with the russians during this time (WWII/cold war).
Possibly they where also implying that russians where evil 'werepeople' which changed into fearsome beasts if you angered them.

                                            - Dyane Aycock, Americans attitude Towards russia, 1971

Yes I noticed there was only 1 black character in the entire movie, and they gave minor roles at best, she was waitress, (not suprissing) and was never thanked for bringing them food, (again no suprise) shows the lack of politness due to the way people thought back then.

There was foreshadowing when 'Lorna' First let Oliver in, he looked at her statue of King john who defended her country from The"witches"of the night. He did so by impaling them with his sword, which ends up happening to her when she bamboozled by her therapist, who only wanted to kill her for being different.

The movie left me sad and rather empty.. At the end of the movie Lorna is tricked into revealing her 'true self' by her heinous therapist, who, once she changed, puled out a sword cane and began to attack her after giving her false hope of acceptance "I don't care what you are".

She killed him and got away. She arrived back at the zoo and freed the black panther,

when she did this I expected the panther to slowly collaborate with 'Lorna'; but when I saw the panther just push past her I felt so sorry for her, it was like the only other being that she felt she was accepted by rejected her. In my mind i think that was what killed her, having no one to be her ally.

(I may include more on this story when I am able to write this from my note book)