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Untitled (The Kiss) Photo by Julia Dean, 2010

The Curse of the Cat People (1944) | dir. Gunther von Fritsch, Robert Wise

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The Curse of the Cat People (1944) Robert Wise and Gunther von Fritsch

March 22nd 2020

#the curse of the cat people #1944 #robert wise #gunther von fritsch #ann carter #kent smith #jane randolph #simone simon #julia dean #eve march #elizabeth russell #sir lancelot #val lewton #amy and her friend

CATTOBER #3 10/20/2019: CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE

I want to be relatively brief about this film, only because it isn’t properly in the horror genre, but I still must insist on including it in my Blogtober survey of the CAT PEOPLE movies. Two years after the advent of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE, which now resides in the Library of Congress, Lewton tried to keep the momentum going with a sequel that shifted strangely into fantasy territory. CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE is a dark children’s movie that features the troubled daughter of CAT PEOPLE protagonists Oliver and Alice. While CURSE does not carry forth the werewolf-like elements from the original film, it does progress the conversation about mental illness and caretaking in a way that is nearly as elegant and moving as its predecessor.

Having left behind the fearful events in CAT PEOPLE, Oliver and Alice (Kent Smith and Jane Randolph, once again)--now husband and wife--have moved to an idyllic suburb to raise their small daughter Amy (the wonderfully affecting Ann Carter). Apparently still haunted by his late first wife Irena, who he remembers as a terminal head case, Oliver is disturbed by his daughter's introverted tendencies. Amy is a sensitive child who prefers the natural world to the company of her rowdy peers, and who has persistent difficulty differentiating between fact and fantasy. Though she has trouble connecting fully with reality, she is painfully aware of her social shortcomings: When she fails to mail her birthday party invitations, instead leaving them in a tree hollow to be delivered by magic (something that apparently happened to little Val Lewton!), she is deeply wounded by her father’s disappointment in her. Oliver is explicit with his child about his desire for her to become extroverted, which he associates with health and normality. Unable to satisfy her father, Amy retreats into a fantasy world--or possibly, the world of the supernatural--in which the apparent ghost of Irena (Simone Simon), who died as a result of a Wolfman-like curse, appears to her as an invisible friend. Oliver’s consternation is piqued as Amy is increasingly involved with her fantasies, and he will have to learn a little empathy before she is totally lost to him.

As CAT PEOPLE was so effective at describing pathological adult relationships, CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE is just as astute about childhood depression. Amy appears to her father as a maladjusted child who can be bent into the shape of an outgoing member of her class, with consistency and discipline. Oliver doesn’t understand that Amy is a different type of person from him: gentle, shy, creative, and highly attuned to the thoughts and feelings of others. Nowhere is this more apparent than when Amy, alone at her own party, blows out her birthday candles and wishes to be a better person. What Oliver takes to be disobedience and immaturity is simply an expression of Amy’s true nature; he is actually the one who needs to compromise. The title seems to refer not to Irena’s supernatural ailment (which ignorant Oliver misremembers as a suicidal delusion), but rather, Oliver is “cursed” with an unfulfilled duty to grow into a more understanding person. It is as if Irena’s ghost arrives in Oliver’s family home to protect Amy from the stubborn rejection that she suffered as his wife, and offer him an opportunity to avoid making the same mistakes as before.

CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE marked the beginning of Robert Wise’s illustrious career as a director, and while it sometimes meanders, DeWitt Bodeen’s return to the pen helps maintain the movie’s psychological consistency. Amy finds some solace in the unlikely friendship of another local weirdo, a reclusive and elderly former actress in a crumbling manse on the edge of the neighborhood. Julia Farren (Julia Dean) loves the imaginative little girl, but rejects her own adult daughter Barbara (Elizabeth Russel), who haunts the peripheries of their house while trying to care for her dementia-afflicted parent. Barbara is a bit of an Irena lookalike, and her fractured relationship with her mother reflects in some ways the drama between all of the other characters in the franchise: Barbara insists on her identity, that she is Julia’s daughter, while Julia continues to believe that she is a different person. This points to the main theme of the CAT PEOPLE continuum: It is about individuality, testifying to your personal truth even when some people would sooner kill you than acknowledge it. CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE may not revisit the horror of the original, but it underlines the important issue of personal identity, and offers the ignorant a chance at redemption.