The Natural Anxious

Cat People (1942)
directed by Jacques Tourneur
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the vaults

I've sold off most of the DVDs I used to own, except for those I like to watch on bad days. Aside from being more or less valueless on the open market, my Val Lewton set will be with me until I can't play DVDs anymore - either because I've been paralyzed in a freak football accident or the technology gets left behind. They encapsulate everything good about movies: the craftsmanship, the beauty, and the pleasure of sitting through them. The key to Cat People is simplicity. It takes place in a city, where one is not usually afraid of being mauled by panthers. But Tourneur is a master at twisting the familiar into something uncertain, just so. The empty spaces on a well-trod late-night walk are expanded, say, or a character realizes that the associates of her husband from work, while kind, could be anyone behind closed doors. That scene in the Serbian restaurant when Elizabeth Russell calls Simone Simon "sister" is as quiet as the snow that falls outside the window but as eerie as a sudden wind on a still October evening.