Cat People (1982)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Cat people |
| Original title | Cat People |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1982 |
| length | 112 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Paul Schrader |
| script |
Alan Ormsby Paul Schrader (anonymous) DeWitt Bodeen (Story) |
| production | Charles W. Fries |
| music |
Giorgio Moroder David Bowie |
| camera | John Bailey |
| cut |
Jacqueline Cambas Jere Huggins Ned Humphreys Bud S. Smith |
| occupation | |
| |
Cat People (Original Title: Cat People ) is an American horror - and fantasy - thriller from 1982. Directed by Paul Schrader , in the lead roles are Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell to see. The plot is based on an original screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen , which was first filmed in 1942 under the same title .
The film tells of the young Irena Gallier, descendant of a family, whose members, when they indulge in erotic feelings, turn into black panthers .
action
After the death of her parents, two circus trainers, the young Irena Gallier lives in an orphanage and then with various foster families. When she grew up, she came to live with her older brother Paul, who lives in New Orleans . Paul's housekeeper Female helps Irena to find her way around the new environment. A short time later Paul disappears without a trace; at the same time, a prostitute is attacked by a black panther in a brothel. They manage to catch the animal and bring it to the zoo, where Irena shows up the next day. She befriends the zoo director Oliver Yates, who gets her a job in the zoo's souvenir shop. They both fall in love.
The panther kills one of the keepers. A short time later, after Oliver got a rifle, the panther has disappeared. Paul appears at home and reveals a family secret to his sister: members of the family are only allowed to have sex with their own siblings, parents or children, otherwise they will turn into a panther. The conversion back into a human can only take place after a human has been killed. Irena and Paul's parents were siblings too. Paul wants to sleep and live with his sister as soon as possible, but Irena refuses and flees from him.
After sleeping with a woman accidentally approached in a cemetery, Paul transforms himself into a panther again and visits Oliver to kill him. Oliver's colleague Alice then shoots the panther. During the autopsy, Oliver experiences how the inside evaporates.
Irena leaves town, but on her journey she has a dream in which her brother explains more details about her origins, and she sees her mother in the form of a panther. She then returns to New Orleans and sleeps with Oliver. After turning into a panther for the first time, however, she spares Oliver and kills an old man instead. Oliver follows her into his hut. She asks him to love her a second time and later to lock her up in the shape of the panther in his zoo; Oliver finally agrees. After a jump in time you can see that Oliver is together with Alice and that Irena lives locked up in the zoo in the form of the panther.
background
Although it was made as a remake of a film that Schrader said he did not appreciate too much, Katzenmensch turned into the “almost personal” of his work. One reason for this would be in the theme of Beatrice , a mythical female figure on Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy is based where Beatrice (probably of Beatrice Portinari is inspired), the poetic I Dante and Purgatory to Paradise leads through hell. The literary topos that is present in Taxi Driver , Schwarzer Engel and again in Katzenmenschen reflects Schrader's personal, obsessive relationship with Nastassja Kinski during the shooting. According to Schrader, Katzenmenschen also owes a lot to the films by Jean Cocteau , the works of Carl Gustav Jung and the film constructions by Ferdinando Scarfiotti (regular production designer for Bernardo Bertolucci and Schrader's A Man for Certain Hours ). He explained the low commercial success with the lack of horror elements for fans of the genre and the too much horror for the more demanding audience.
The later Oscar winner Allen Hall was also involved in the special effects .
Katzenmenschen started on April 2, 1982 in the USA and on August 26 of the same year in the Federal Republic of Germany . With an estimated budget of 18 million US dollars , the box office was in US cinemas on about 7 million US dollars.
Reviews
Roger Ebert praised the portrayal of Nastassja Kinski and John Heard in the Chicago Sun-Times and described the film as a “good film in the old tradition”. Phil Edwards described the film in Starburst as a "failure - but an exciting one!"
Hans Gerhold described the film in the film service as “perfect cinema”, Guntram Lenz praised the inner drama of the plot and the performance of the actors in the film observer .
At that time , Hans-Christoph Blumenberg criticized that films like the Schraders were not about people, but about effects: "The glaring clarity of the fair hinders the imagination."
The lexicon of international films judged: "Aesthetically brilliant and staged in strictly stylized images, the film falls into a questionable misogynist ideology - female sexuality appears as a demonic, destructive power that must be domesticated."
Awards
Giorgio Moroder was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for the film music and together with David Bowie for the title song Cat People (Putting Out Fire) . Nastassja Kinski received a nomination for the Saturn Award for her performance .
See also
literature
- Gary Brandner: Cat People: A Novelization of the Film. Fawcett Gold Medal, New York 1982, ISBN 0-449-14470-4 ; German cat people. Novel to film. Heyne Verlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-453-44055-2 .
- Rolf Giesen, Ronald M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: The new lexicon of horror films. Lexikon Imprint Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89602-507-4 , pp. 357-358.
Web links
- Cat People in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Cat people atrotten tomatoes(English)
- Review in Schnitt - Das Filmmagazin on schnitt.de
- From child woman to cat woman. Review in a Kinski film cycle in Zurich on xenix.ch
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kevin Jackson (Ed.): Schrader on Schrader and Other Writings. Faber & Faber, 2004.
- ↑ a b Cat People in the Internet Movie Database .
- ^ "A good movie in an old tradition" - Review in the Chicago Sun-Times of January 1, 1982.
- ↑ a b Ronald M. Hahn, Volker Jansen: Lexicon of the horror film. Bastei-Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach, 1985–89.
- ↑ Hans-Christoph Blumenberg: In the maze of effects. in: Die Zeit No. 35 of August 27, 1982.
- ↑ Cat People. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .