Irena the Crazy Cat Lady - Shannon Balstad, Response Paper 3

In a present day world where people are encouraged more and more everyday to freely express themselves, it’s difficult to imagine the constraints directors, writers, and producers faced when met with the Motion Picture Production Code in the 1930’s.  Surrounding several issues that involved their decency, the “Hays” Code, as it was referred to, implemented strict regulations on matters including sex, violence, and questions of morality.  In his movie Cat People (a title that offers some restrictions in itself), Val Lewton uses clever discrepancies to the Production Code to incorporate feelings of sympathy that relate to the character Irena’s plight in being “othered” and to give recognition to the presence of Freud and the uncanny in readings of the film.

            The placement of the uncanny on the female spectacle in Cat People is emphasized by the psychoanalytic reading of the film and articulated by Freud, “Many people experience the feeling of the uncanny in relation to death and dead bodies, to the return of the dead and spirits and ghosts”.  The ghost is a powerful figure of the primal uncanny, as it associates women with the fleeting, making them appear unstable and therefore undesirable.  Irene is the epitome of this reading, as she is immediately “othered” in the film and put in direct contrast to the additional characters by her accent and belief in superstitions.  She is a complex, tortured woman and therefore distant.  Oliver, on the other hand, is the complete opposite.  He is the typical happy, optimistic Americano, while she is a dread-fearing immigrant.  

 

The stark contrast between Irene and the other characters is also illustrated by the mise en scène in her apartment.  The lighting is low key and a nod to European expressionism.  The décor lays out Irena’s belief in the myth and comments on the part of the narrative that consists of her becoming an animal.  This notion is also important in regards to how “becoming” is a feared process.  We see this in Irena, as she fears becoming a cat, which is her character’s inability to comprehend or confront “becoming”.  She fears what it entails; not only a cat, but also being a true “Mrs.” and being Americanized, as well.  

To be a true “Mrs. Reed”, Irena would have to experience sexuality with a man, but her beliefs in the superstitions and myths prevent her from doing so for fear of becoming a cat.  It also coincides with the Hays Code to have her sexuality be stifled and communicated in less-obvious ways, for instance in the presentation of the uncanny in the film.  Irena’s plight can be summed up in a quote from Donna Heiland, “An innocent woman trapped by one man and freed by another”.  Irena is trapped by her fear of the King John myth and tortured by her father’s absence, and wishes to be freed by Oliver.  However, she is sexually repressed, as is the film.  The uncanny is shown through certain instances such as the notion of keys and keyholes in the film, as well as Irena’s slow transformation into a cat.  Her movements start becoming more feline-like, slinky and slow, and her inner cat stars purring. 

Val Lewton played on the lines of the Production Code by disguising hints of sexuality such as this in the film.  He expertly places Irena as the “other” and illuminates sexuality in the film through metaphors pertaining to the character’s stories.  Another aspect of the code Lewton plays with in the end is not allowing sympathy to be “thrown at evil”.  While Irena may have been viewed as the villain in the movie, it’s hard not to feel pangs of sympathy for her as she is discovered dead by Oliver and Alice, and her widowed husband comments on how, “She never lied to us”.  It’s in this moment of self-realization that Oliver understands how Irena’s problems weren’t to be so easily dismissed as they had been, and that by doing so, Oliver only drove Irena away.  Val Lewton expertly incorporates these discrepancies and invites the viewer to ponder the film, urging them to discover the ever-so-obvious presence of Freud, the uncanny, and Irena’s struggle.