Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/04/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Cat People (Paul Schrader, 1982)

Cat People (Paul Schrader, 1982)

Cast: Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, Annette O’Toole, Ruby Dee, Ed Begley Jr., Scott Paulin, Frankie Faison, Ron Diamond, Lynn Lowry, John Larroquette. Screenplay: Alan Ormsby, based on a story by DeWitt Bodeen. Cinematography: John Bailey. Art direction: Edward Richardson. Film editing: Jacqueline Cambas, Jere Huggins, Ned Humphreys. Music: Giorgio Moroder.

Cat People is bloodier and kinkier than its source, the moody 1942 film of the same name, directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by the maker of atmospheric horror films, Val Lewton. In the earlier movie, the ravages of the prowling cat persons were off-screen, suggested but not shown. In Paul Schrader’s remake, they’re played to shock, not just to creep you out. The subtext, a fear of sex, remains the same, although the earlier film is more about a fear of female sexuality, while the Schrader version adds incest to the mix. It’s all very stylishly done, with Nastassja Kinski excellent as the woman haunted by a past she is unaware of, and Malcolm McDowell as her unstable brother. John Heard is rather eccentrically cast as the male lead, a New Orleans zookeeper, though he’s an improvement over the dull Kent Smith in the original film. The wonderful Ruby Dee has a smallish but important role as Female – pronounced Fe-MAH-ly.