Sunday, August 26, 2007

Double FELINE feature

We settled in for a night of movie watching last night, cuing up the DVD player for what we called our "Double FELINE feature."
1) We opened the show with a DVD of a performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats." The girls loved it. Kerstin sang along to "Memory" with Grizabella, while Annika termed Rum Tum Tugger the "Elvis of Cats."
2) I introduced Jill and the girls to Jacques Tourneur's "Cat People." It is one of the greatest of films, I think, with Simone Simon (pictured) starring as Irena Dubrovna, a Serbian immigrant convinced that she is among the cat people of her village, who transform into deadly panthers when aroused by jealousy, anger or passion.
The girls were transfixed by the shadowy imagery of the 1942 film.
Annika jumped at the "bus," a famous effect in which Tourneur interrupts our focus on a character's anxiety ridden face with the hissing of a bus door .
I love "Cat People" for its reliance on the power of suggestion -- and not technical effects -- to generate its fearful atmosphere. Plus I have a "thing" for Simone Simon.

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