F&TVR’s Top Ten Films of 2017

The Shape of Water & Atomic Blonde

*****

The Shape of Water

(2017 Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Story by Guillermo del Toro.  

Screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor.

119 minutes.

Cast: Sally Hawkins (Elisa Esposito), Richard Jenkins (Giles), Michael Shannon (Richard Strickland), Octavia Spencer (Zelda Fuller), Doug Jones (Amphibian Man), David Hewlett (Fleming), Nick Searcy (General Hoyt).

Doug Jones & Sally Hawkins

This film is one that I had been looking forward to for some time.  When I read about Guillermo del Toro working on it my hope was that it would be as good as I knew it could be.  As you may be able to tell from some of the other content on F&TVReview, I was a fan of the Universal horror films.  The Creature from the Black Lagoon was always a favorite of mine.  I think it was because it was a step away from the more familiar gothic horror like Dracula and the Wolfman that we were more common then.  It was so different and the underwater photography was incredible.

Richard Jenkins & Sally Hawkins

In a year of offbeat films, this one was far and away the most unusual (Colossal was a close second in the offbeat category–but both of them are poignant, each in their own way).  The writer/director‘s love for the source material is evident in every frame of The Shape of Water.  The casting is astonishingly good.  In short, the film rocketed beyond my wildest hopes for it.  It earned every word of praise that it has received and every award.  It exceeded my expectations in ways that I didn’t even suspect were possible.  He visulized the creature in a way that is more realistic as well as more fantastic.  He imagined the unimaginable and made it work with dignity and grace.  The alien is not always so far away that the distance cannot be breached with love and understanding.

Sally Hawkins is perfect as the woman that falls in love with the creature.  Her empathy is apparent from the moment that she realizes how the creature is being treated.  Richard Jenkins’ Giles is a faithful friend who understands her plight.  They know that they have to free the poor creature and don’t care that the task is impossible.  They push beyond all reasonable odds.  It is good to see justice, even if it’s fantasy justice. The photography is lush and beautifully sea colored throughout this Valentine to a bygone Hollywood and an unfinished beauty and the beast story.   At a time when Universal is attempting to reboot it’s golden age of horror, maybe they should take a look at The Shape of Water to find the shape of things to come.

*****

Atomic Blonde (2017 Focus Features)

Directed by David Leitch.  Screenplay by Kurt Johnstad.  Based on Oni Press graphic novel series, The Coldest City.

Cast: Charlize Theron (Lorraine Broughton), James McAvoy (David Percival), Sofia Boutella (Delphine Lasalle), Eddie Marsan (Spyglass), John Goodman (Emmett Kurzfeld), Toby Jones (Eric Gray), James Faulkner (Chief ‘C’).

115 minutes.

Charlize Theron

You will not find an action film with more well executed action and mayhem anywhere.   Charlize Theron has topped Gina Carano in Haywire (2012), but that’s unfair because Carano had it in her but her director just wasn’t up to it.  David Leitch unleashes a typhoon of action in the form of Lorraine Broughton played with a fervor that will have you ducking in your seat by Charlize Theron.  This is a full tilt spy story that moves fast and brutally takes you down with it.  You feel every blow and even anticipate what’s coming.  In a particularly violent fight scene when Lorraine suddenly grabs a corkscrew you will be thinking, “Oh no–don–” but that’s as far as you will get.  Yes. It’s a long vicious ride through the dark of neon nights of spy vs counterspy backstabbing and gunfire.

Charlize Theron & Sofia Boutella
Charlize Theron

Charlize is unstoppable as an actress and as a spy.  The supporting cast is deep under the cover of the parts they play.  The story unfolds in flashbacks as Lorraine is being debriefed.  This works well for Leitch because it adds to the suspense by adding an element of uncertainty.  Who’s telling the truth?  James McAvoy is an agent in Berlin in 1989 and an MI6 agent has been murdered.  The agent was carrying a list of agent identities when he was killed.  You know how that goes–everybody wants the list!  The McGuffin is typical spy stuff, but the opulent visuals, incredible action, and the sensual scenes between Lorraine (Theron) and Delphine (Sofia Boutella) keep you from thinking too hard about how you’ve seen this plot before.

James McAvoy & Charlize Theron

What you focus on is up to you, as far as I’m concerned–they had me with the title.

 

dvd & blu-ray reviews

In a Lonely Place (Santana Productions/Columbia Pictures 1950)

Criterion Collection #810   

Directed by Nicholas Ray.  Produced by Robert Lord. 

Screenplay by Andrew Solt.  Adaption by Edmund H. North. 

Based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes.

Cast: Humphry Bogart (Dixon Steele), Gloria Grahame (Laurel Gray), Frank Lovejoy (Brub Nicolai), Carl Benton Reid (Captain Lochner), Art Smith (Mel Lippman), Jeff Donnell (Sylvia Nicolai), Martha Stewart (Mildred Atkinson).

 

In a Lonely Place is a milestone of noir for a number of reasons, not the least of all is its having been produced by Bogart’s Santana Productions.  It holds not only what is arguably his best performance, but Gloria Grahame’s (Crossfire, Macao, The Big Heat) as well.  It boasts a taut screenplay by Andrew Solt loosely based on the popular Dorothy B. Hughes novel.  I also feel it is Nicholas Ray’s best effort.

It is the story of screenwriter Dixon Steele whose volatile personality leads to him becoming a murder suspect until he is given an alibi by his attractive neighbor, Laurel Gray.  Laurel is slowly drawn to him even though he is being investigated for the murder by the police.  They fall in love, but his personality gets worse and worse.  His behavior becomes more and more erratic until she begins to have her doubts about him.  Her changed behavior only serves to further agitate him.  He becomes unstable to the point that she fears him and tries to escape.

Bogart plays the screenwriter with his usual cool, but the anger breaks through to a frightening level that is all nervous energy and loss of control.  Graham’s ability to inject humor into the bleakness and Bogart’s Jekyll and Hyde performance combine to make this a dark gem.  Nicolas Ray’s direction is at its peak, which is a paradox because his marriage to Gloria Graham was falling apart while the film was in production.

With a beautiful score by the avant-garde composer, George Antheil (Knock on Any Door, Sirocco), and photography by Burnett Guffey (Mr. Sardonicus, Bird Man of Alcatraz, Bonnie and Clyde), Ray constructs a memorable noir while living through a personal lonely place that serves to enhance his performance as a director to a level most never achieve.

The extra features on this Criterion Blu-Ray include 2k Digital Restoration for  incredible picture and sound quality.   Commentary by film scholar Dana Polan.  An enlightening documentary from 1975: I’m a Stranger Here Myself about Nicolas Ray.  A new interview with biographer Vincent Curcio (author of Suicide Blonde: the Life of Gloria Grahame) about actor Gloria Grahame which gives insight into both the relationship between the director and his wife and how their relationship inspired Ray’s interpretation of the characters.

 *****

Ride the Pink Horse (1947 Universal International Pictures)

Criterion Collection #750

Directed by Robert Montgomery.  Produced by Joan Harrison.

Screenplay by Ben Hecht & Charles Lederer & Joan Harrison (uncredited). 

Based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes.

Cast: Robert Montgomery (Gagin), Thomas Gomez (Pancho), Wanda Hendrix (Pila), Art Smith (Bill Retz), Andrea King (Marjorie), Fred Clark (Hugo).

Ride the Pink Horse is one of those films that is so well done that you have to wonder why it isn’t better known.  In reviewing the film’s credits from the adapted original novel to the screen writers and producer it’s not difficult to understand how well made the film is, and Robert Montgomery’s portrayal of Gagin is only surpassed by his direction.  Dorothy B. Hughs also wrote the novel that In a Lonely Place was based upon.  Joan Harrison worked as an assistant to Alfred Hitchcock and was soon contributing to scripts.  She wrote the script for Rebecca with Robert E. Sherwood.  Ben Hecht wrote the scripts for Rear Window and Notorious.  The film is beautifully photographed by the incomparable Russell Metty (Touch of Evil, The Misfits).

Gagin is a tough guy that has come to Mexico to find Hugo.  Montgomery plays the part like as classic hard boiled character, mostly silence and short sentences.   He’s mean spirited, arrogant, and condescends to the Mexicans me meets including a teenage girl who gives him a charm to ward off danger.  The only thing he will say is that he’s there to see Hugo for his friend ‘Shorty’.  A man that claims to be an FBI agent whose name is Retz approaches Gagin and wants to know what he wants with Hugo.  Retz tells Gagin that he has been tailing Hugo for some time.  He does seem to know more than Gagin does about what is going on, but Gagin won’t talk.  Retz tries to appeal to him as an American citizen to do the right thing.  Gagin’s a disgruntled veteran who feels he owes nothing to anyone.   It is clear that Gagin is in trouble. The Mexican girl gives him the charm of protection for no reason, and now this man is warning him off of Hugo.  Things are adding up, buy Gagin doesn’t seem to be paying any attention.

The film holds a lot of surprises.  Wanda Hendrix’s wonderfully underplayed Pila as a very concerned and possibly psychic Mexican girl, Thomas Gomez’s over the top Pancho that keeps you guessing, and Fred Clark as a cold and ruthless mobster.  Art Smith has his moments of comic support as does Thomas Gomez, but all the humor is dead pan.  All in all this deserves all five stars and then some.  A great disc to add to any collection.

The extra features on this Criterion Blu-Ray include 2k Digital Restoration for  incredible picture and sound quality. Audio commentary featuring film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini.  A wonderful new interview with Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the CityLux Radio Theater adaptation of the film from 1947, featuring Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, and Thomas Gomez.  An essay by filmmaker and writer Michael Almereyda.

  *****

Frankenstein is 200: James Whale

The Universal Years 1931 – 1935

In 1931 Universal released the first sound version of Frankenstein.  It was directed by James Whale who not only had a wonderful visual sense, but also a flair for the dramatic as well as the symbolic.  The film was intended to be  directed by Robert Florey  (Murders in the Rue Morgue, Twilight Zone Original Television Show) who had wanted to cast Bela Lugosi.   When Lugosi turned it down because he feared being typecast after having just done Dracula (some say it was because he didn’t want to be covered up with all that make-up), Florey left the project.  Whale was then assigned to the film and cast the unknown Boris Karloff.  The choice of Boris Karloff for the part of the monster was nothing short of inspired.  In addition to his being physically perfect for the role, Karloff insisted that the creature should not speak and gave the performance of his career without uttering a single word.

Boris Karloff in Frankenstein 1931
Frankenstein 1931 Universal

This is not the only detail that differed from the novel.  I would guess that most viewers of the movies who have not read the novel would be surprised to see how different Shelly’s story is from the films that have been based on her idea.  In the novel, the Monster not only spoke, but he reasoned.  Though there was no ‘bride’ in the novel, it was what the Creature was demanding from his creator– a woman to be his mate.  It was the reason that the Monster haunted and terrorized Frankenstein and his family, but the Doctor having made one mistake had no intention of making another.  Whale’s interpretation presents the Monster as an innocent.  Whereas in the novel, the Creature knows fully well what he is doing from the outset.  Whale’s creativity shaped a mythos that would endure well beyond his two features.  Even though Hammer took what they felt was a different approach to the story in the 1950’s (more later) to avoid a lawsuit from Universal, they too were influenced by Whale.

German expressionism cast a large shadow in the production due to Whale’s love for the style, the dark and shadowy almost dreamlike quality of Frankenstein is the result.  Working with cinematographer, Arthur Edeson (The Invisible Man, The Maltese Falcon)  who shared Whale’s admiration for the German expressionist films of the 1920’s resulted in a harmonious vision that has become a milestone in film history.   

Colin Clive and Dwight Frye in Frankenstein 1931
Colin Clive and Edward Van Sloan in Frankenstein 1931

The Monster’s innocence and search for the light are thwarted again and again by ignorance and hate.  The scene with the little girl, played by Marilyn Harris (Destry Rides Again, uncredited) has suspense, terror, and finally pathos as he runs away from what he has done.  The Creature’s lack of malice brings the viewer to pity the Monster.

Boris Karloff and Marilyn Harris
Colin Clive and Boris Karloff

Audiences would have to wait until 1935 for the sequel to Frankenstein.  The wait was rewarded with the best of the Frankenstein movies.  The Bride of Frankenstein is James Whale’s culmination of the mythos that he began with Frankenstein.  Today’s audiences may not realize what an enormous success Frankenstein was and that horror films were not looked down on as they sometimes are today.  In many cases, they were the studios top money makers.

The symbolism begun in Frankenstein is continued here.  The Creature’s search for the light in the darkness of the world is thwarted by hubris, ignorance and fear.  Karloff picks up where he left off and gains power through the slow introduction of speech as he struggles even harder to be accepted by a world that is not at all ready or willing.

One of the best known scenes is when the Monster is in the Hermit’s (O.P. Heggie) Cottage.  It was famously parodied in Mel Brook’s, Young Frankenstein (more on that later) but it was played here for truth and takes us to the brink of empathy just barely managing not to push us over. After his first experience of human compassion, the Creature must again flee when the Hunters arriving at the cabin make sure we are yanked back to the harsh and ugly reality of his situation.

Ernest Thesiger and Boris Karloff

Whale’s spot-on casting went beyond his choice of Boris Karloff. As important was the inclusion of the sinister Dr. Pretorius played with furious abandon by Ernest Thesiger (The Old Dark House, The Robe, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone).  Thesiger went off the rails in his role of the instigator of the creation of the  Bride.  He pushes the reluctant Frankenstein hard and fast to commit yet another atrocity.  He has so many wonderful moments in the film that I might have called it, Doctor Pretorius and the Bride of Frankenstein.  The stand out is the scene with his ‘little people’ that has been said to be one of Whale’s contributions to Walter Hurlbut & John L. Balderston’s screenplay.  We are convinced from the moment he arrives that he is irrevocably insane and will appeal to the irrational in Dr. Frankenstein’s scientific mind overwhelming the good doctor’s common sense.

Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorius

The bride of Dr. Frankenstein is played by Valerie Hobson.  In some of the posters and ads there was a hint that she may be in the running to be the monster’s bride.

Valerie Hobson and Boris Karloff
Who will the Monster choose?

The other bride is of course is played by Elsa Lanchester (Mary Poppins, Murder by Death).  Lanchester also portrays Mary Shelly in the over the top prelude that opens the film, and is set in the mansion of Lord Byron.  This little vignette of a night when the teen-aged Mary Shelly continues her telling of the tale of Frankenstein is unsettling because it reveals the fact that a teenage  Mary was not only alone in an old mansion with Percy Shelly and  Lord Byron but she also penned this tale of horror.

Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelly
Elsa Lanchester

Her performance as the Bride is short, but forcefully unforgettable.  The montage of the doctor’s preparations, and the storm, and the strobing electrical equipment all build up to the introduction of the bride.   After the customary cinematic foreplay with the flashing lightning, the first sign of life is the movement of her fingers, then we hear her moan, but the big ‘she’s alive’ moment comes when we see her eyes through a slit in the bandages that cover her from head to toe.  Pretorius and Frankenstein raise the table and her arms rise as the doctors watch. Next, the camera cuts to allow us to see her fully unveiled and wearing a white lab gown that looks bizarrely like a wedding dress.  Franz Waxman’s score rumbles as Dr. Pretorius announces, “The Bride of Frankenstein,” and the score segues into wedding bells.  All this makes it so much worse when the unexpected comes as even his specially created bride rejects the Creature.  How much can a Monster stand?  Giving up his faith in the world of men, the Creature throws in the towel with the line, “…we belong dead,” as he, Pretorius and the Bride are left to the fire.

Jack P. Pierce at work
Jack P. Pierce’s work on Elsa Lanchester

Jack P. Pierce designed and applied the make-up for Bride of Frankenstein as he had for Frankenstein and would for all of the other Universal horror films to come.  Considered a pioneer in the years that he worked at Universal making the monsters possible,  he clearly was the studio’s greatest asset from 1930 to 1947.  Although Bela Lugosi wouldn’t allow him to apply the make-up for Dracula (Lugosi’s background was Theater and he had always applied his own make-up), he was instrumental in the character design.  The films remain a testimony to one of the most talented of Hollywood’s make-up artists.

James Whale directing Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein

Sadly, Whale would not direct any more of the Frankenstein films.  One can’t help wonder how much better Son of Frankenstein or Ghost of Frankenstein would have been if he had held onto the reigns.  Without him, the subsequent films based on Mary Shelley’s monster would become much less than he had imagined in the first two classic films of the Universal series.  Though they would retain some of the actors and some exceptional performances that would keep the story moving toward the future, something very vibrant was missing.  It was that spark of genius that one finds in directors and producers as disparate as Val Lewton, John Huston, David O. Selznick,  Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller, and Alfred Hitchcock.  He would go on to make other films, but none with the power or success of his Frankenstein films.

NEXT:

The Universal Years:  1939 – 1948

Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone in Son of Frankenstein
Lon Chaney Jr., and Bela Lugosi in Ghost of Frankenstein

F&TVR’s Top Ten Films of 2017

The Top 10 Films of 2017 as selected by F&TVReview will be named two  at a time beginning with:  Get Out and Colossal.  As a side note–when adding an actors other credits, they will usually be films or TV shows that I recommend and if in boldface–they are must sees.

Get Out (Universal 2017)

Written & Directed by Jordan Peele.

104 minutes.

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya (Chris Washington),  Allison Williams (Rose Armitage), Bradley Whitford (Dean Armitage), Catherine Keener (Missy Armitage), Caleb Landry Jones (Jeremy Armitage), Marcus Henderson (Walter), Betty Gabriel (Georgina), Lakeith Stanfield (Andre Logan King), Stephen Root (Jim Hudson), Lil Rel Howery (Rod Williams).

Daniel Kaluuya
Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Allison Williams, Betty Gabriel, and Daniel Kaluuya
Lil Rel Howery

This is one of those films that I’d heard a lot about long before I finally saw it.  I’d heard nothing but good things and formed an impression based on the limited knowledge that I had.  I couldn’t stop thinking of Peele as a comedian.  I had even seen the trailer,  but  was still expecting Shaun of the Dead–you get the picture.   Of course I was wrong.  It is a tightly scripted mad scientist movie with a tongue in cheek twist, and it is played dead pan by an incredible cast led by Daniel Kaluuya (Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits, Kick Ass 2, Black Panther)

Lakeith Stanfield

 and Allison Williams.  Lil Rel Howery does the broad comedy and dramatic support is in good hands with Lakeith Stanfield, Betty Gariel, and Marcus Henderson pouring on the creepy.

Betty Gabriel

Bradley Whitford (A Cabin in the Woods, Saving Mr. Banks) is perfect as the mad scientist with Catherine Keener (Johnny Suede, Living in Oblivion, A Late Quartet, Being John Malkovich) as his wife who makes a tea cup into a nightmarish symbol of possession.

Bradley Whitford
Catherine Keener

The plot is carefully paced as the strangeness that slowly increases engulfs Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya who was deservedly nominated for an academy award for his performance) as his fiancé (Allison Williams in a performance that is astonishingly underplayed which makes the Fruit Loops and glass of milk even creepier) just keeps shrugging his complaints off as situational jitters.  His run ins with the black servants (at first the only blacks except himself) and one of the black guests at a family gathering set off a clock that once it begins ticking, the story moves faster and faster toward the unexpected–or possibly dreaded finale.  There is always the danger of using a formula and winding up with the same old, but in this case Peele’s originality takes off and carries us into an unfamiliar place.  Finally, a new horror film that decorates the clock with the wit and originality.

GLF

Colossal (NEON 2017)

Written and Directed by Nacho Vigalondo.

110 minutes

Anne Hathaway (Gloria)

Cast: Anne Hathaway (Gloria), Jason Sudiekis (Oscar), Austin Stowell (Joel), Tim Blake Nelson (Garth), Dan Stevens (Tim), Hannah Cheramy (Yung Gloria), Nathan Ellison (Young Oscar).

Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudiekis (Oscar).

Colossal was a complete surprise.  I hadn’t heard about it or read any reviews, and the trailer I saw on a friend of mine’s phone before we went to see it (we were in a noisy restaurant so I really couldn’t hear anything) led me to believe I was going to see a monster movie.  Colossal is about a monster, but it’s the one in each of us.  There are so many ways to unleash it.  To let it rage and tear though everything good.  I think we are learning that more every day.  The trigger here is booze, but the days of Wine and Roses was never like this.
                                                      
This is a tour de force that pushes Anne Hathaway (Get Smart, Les Misérables, Ocean’s 8), and Jason Sudiekis (Horrible Bosses) to new heights.  It may well remain their best performances for a long, long time.  Gloria is dumped by her boyfriend in New York because all she does is drink and party.  She goes back to her home town and moves into the house where she grew up.

Tim Blake Nelson & Austin Stowell

Sudiekis has never been better as her childhood friend and the two begin an alcoholic dance of doom that is further exacerbated by Gloria’s gradual realization that she is in fact the Godzilla like monster that is leveling Seoul, South Korea on the nightly news.  Powerful support is lent by Austin Stowell (Bridge of Spies) and Tim Blake Nelson (Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, As I Lay Dying), as Joel is seduced by Gloria and Garth has his own anger issues and drug problems.  They are both as astonished and horrified as Oscar seems to be as Gloria breaks the news to them about Seoul in a hilarious show and tell with tablet and phone in the playground where she takes her nightly drunken strolls.

Nacho Vigalondo’s script is both original and fascinating.  Although it works through a fantastically unreal conceit, it is brilliantly accurate.  Yes, it is drama and horror and comedy–but none in the way that we usually think of them.  And that is its genius.   

GLF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frankenstein is 200: The Beginning

The Beginning

First published in 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly’s Frankenstein (or, The Modern Prometheus) has influenced filmmakers since the Thomas A. Edison produced 16 minute short from 1910, Frankenstein.  Beyond this first tentative journey into mystery are filmmakers from Paul Wegener to James Whale to Kenneth Branagh.  The creature has been created, burned, and reincarnated numerous times.

Charles Ogle in Frankenstein 1910
Title for 1910 Frankenstein.

After the Edison version, there were a number of other silent films either based or loosely based on Shelly’s novel: Der Golem, Deutsch Bioscop, 1914 (Germany) directed by Henrick Galeen and Paul Wegener and featuring Paul Wegener and Lyda Salmonova, Life Without a Soul, Ocean Film Corporation, 1915 (USA) 70 Minutes, directed by Joseph W Smiley and featuring Percy Darrell Standing and Lucy Cotton, and again,

The Golem, Pagu/UFA, 1920 (Germany) directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese and featuring Paul Wegener and Lyda Salmonova, in a longer version, and finally, Il Mostro di Frankenstein, Albertini Film/UCI, 1920 (Italy) 39 minutes,  featuring: Albertini Linda as Elizabeth,  Luciano  Albertini as Baron Frankenstein  and Umberto Guarracino as The Monster.

l Mostro di Frankenstein 1920

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was eleven more years before James Whale’s classic Frankenstein starring the astonishingly intuitive acting of Boris Karloff would illuminate movie screens around the world.  It would take talking pictures to bring the monster to his full glory even though Boris Karloff insisted that the monster should not speak and proved his point with a performance that once seen is not easily forgotten.

NEXT TO COME: The Universal Years – James Whale

Producers & Directors Series

VAL LEWTON at RKO

(Header: Robert Wise, Mark Robson, and Val Lewton)

Val Lewton

Cat People (1942)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

The Leopard Man (1943)

The Seventh Victim (1943)

The Ghost Ship (1943)

The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Mademoiselle Fifi (1944)

Youth Runs Wild (1944)

The Body Snatcher (1945)

Isle of the Dead (1945)

Bedlam (1946)

My Own True Love (1948)

Please Believe Me (1950)

Apache Drums (1951)

Cat People  * The 7th Victim *  I Walked with a Zombie

Val Lewton was born in Yalta in 1904.  He was brought to America in 1909 by his mother and was raised by his mother and his aunt, the famous actress/writer/producer Alla Nazimova.  He grew up to be a  writer of novels, radio scripts, and news articles.  One of his novels, No Bed of Her Own became a film called No Man of her Own in 1933 directed by Wesley Ruggles and staring Clark Gable and Carol Lombard.

He began working as a story editor for MGM through the influence of his famous aunt.  Working on David O. Selznick’s staff as a story editor (actually writing scenes for Gone with the Wind), he eventually left to work as a producer at RKO.   The first film he made there was Cat People (1942).  From 1942 to 1946 he was instrumental in saving the ailing studio in the wake of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.  Ironically two of his editor/directors had worked as editors on the two films that almost bankrupted the studio.  Robert Wise and Mark Robson found themselves on Lewton’s team when Orson Welles left the Studio.

While Cat People is said to be a title that was suggested to Lewton who suffered from ailurophobia,  because of his morbid fear of cats it is not surprising that he would choose it when he was put in charge of a B picture unit specializing in horror.   His job was to create films to compete with  the successful and popular Universal horror films.  His dread of cats is transferred to the screen in one of the most memorable horror films of the period.  A tremendous feat considering that he was limited to a budget of no more than $150,000.00 per film.

   

Cat People (1942) Produced by Val Lewton.  Directed by Jacques Tourneur.  Screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen.

Cast:  Simone Simon, Tom Conway,  Kent Smith,  Jan Randolph,  Jack Holt and unbilled, Elizabeth Russel.

Jacques Tourneur was the director on the first three Lewton films at RKO.  Cat People remains one of the most enigmatic and atmospheric of horror films.  Due in part to the low budget, much is left to the viewer’s imagination.  The swimming pool scene remains one of the most terrifyingly chilling moments in horror.  The impact of the unseen is still evident even as we watch it from the distance and experience of more than half a century.

Lewton and Tourneur had worked together on the second unit at MGM on A Tale of Two Cities.  Tourneur went on to direct I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man for Lewton.  Later, Tourneur would direct Out of the Past (1947), an exceptional Film Noir in a career that would continue through the mid 1960’s. The Seventh Victim (1943) Produced by Val Lewton.  Directed by Mark Robson. Screenplay by Charles O’Neal and DeWitt Bodeen.

Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Kim Hunter, Evelyn Brent, Erford Gage, Ben Bard, Hugh Beaumont.

In an interview for The Celluloid Muse, Mark Robson spoke of Lewton, “Val didn’t know much about film, physically speaking.  He knew stories very well; he had a great fondness for directors and writers.  But he was fundamentally a writer, a poet, a novelist poet, an historian.”  Robson went on, “He thought of his unit –and he had his own little horror unit—in terms of the producer, the writer, the director and the editor; a kind of team in which we all worked extremely closely together.”

Mark Robson was assigned to Lewton’s unit as an editor and by 1943 was promoted to direct The Seventh Victim. Prior to this, he had been editor with Robert Wise on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.  Also doing the final editing on Ambersons to restore it to Welles’ vision.  This was at a point when Welles all but abandoned the project.

Jean Brooks starred in  The Seventh Victim, a problematic film that purports to be about a group of devil worshipers but really feels like it is about something else.  What?  Well, that’s just it.  The evidence on the surface is minimal, but looking into Lewton’s development sheds some light on what is mostly conjecture.  In an interview for the book, Women in Horror: 1940’s, Val Lewton Jr. told writer, Gregory William Mank that he felt that the Jean Brooks character (Jacqueline) was based on his father’s  famous aunt, Alla Nazimova.

Nazimova was not only a star of the stage and silent screen, but also is credited with coining the term ‘sewing circle’ as a cover for the lesbian activities in Hollywood.  She claimed among her lovers, Dolly Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s niece.

Jean Brooks in The 7th Victim

I Walked with a Zombie (1943) Produced by Val Lewton.  Directed by Jacques Tourneur.  Screenplay by Curt Siodman and Ardel Wray.

Cast:  Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, James Bell and Christine Gordon.

After Cat People, Jacques Tourneur‘s next project for Lewton was the uniquely atmospheric, I Walked with a Zombie.  Although its title and short running time of 69 minutes may put some off–it is a mistake to miss this classic.  This is a chilling and well produced entry in the horror genre that stars Frances Dee, Tom Conway, and Christine Gordon.  Like Lewton’s Cat People and The 7th Victim, it remains in a class by itself.

 

Once again, Lewton’s production has much more that the usual B movie in every facet of the film; the shadowy photography by J. Roy Hunt, inspired art direction by Albert S. D’Agostino and a solid script by Curt Siodman and Ardel Wray.

 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

A Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson,  Alfred Knopf, 1995.

The Celluloid Muse, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, Henry Regnery Company, 1969.

Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, David Thomas, Alfred Knopf, 1992.

The Sewing Circle, Alex Madsen, Birch Lane/Carol Publishing Group, 1995.

Women in Horror, 1940’s, Gregory William Mank,  McFarland & Company, 1999.