Cat People

A woman moves to New York from Serbia but can’t escape her inner feline demons in this atmospheric mix of folk horror and sexual tension.

Irena (Simone Simon), a young commercial artist, lives near the zoo and is drawn to the black panthers, who she loves to sketch. There she meets Oliver (Kent Smith) an all-American boy, and soon the two are engaged. He is fascinated by her exoticism, and she hopes that his wholesomeness will counter the ancient and evil legacy of her ancestry, for she fears she is one of the cat people, destined to kill those they love.

Jacques Tourneur’s influential B movie was made on a small budget and creates a sense of terror through the brilliant use of shadow and light, sound effects and suspense rather than special effects.

Cats feature as symbols of female sexuality but appear in many other guises throughout the film, both innocent and threatening: black panthers; an office cat; pet shop kittens; cats in sculptures, sketches and paintings; animated cats in a dream sequence; women who look like cats; cats in the shadows and the shadows of cats. Keep your eye out for the tiny cat-shaped figurehead on a model boat seen briefly when Irena visits the museum.

– Fiona Trigg, Senior Curator