Cat People’s most brilliant moments were born out of the necessity for inventive filmmaking. Legendary producer Val Lewton, whose short-lived career at RKO in the 1940s realized some of classic Hollywood’s most atmospheric and haunting pictures, had few resources with which to make his short run of horror films. Working with modest budgets, Lewton’s productions used economically convenient shadows and narrative ambiguity that created a richer, more involving experience for his audience. Lewton’s desire to elevate the low-budget “B” production resulted in literate, restrained films that explored the depths of the human psyche. None more so than this 1942 release, as evidenced by the film’s remarkable artistry; its themes of inwardness, alienation, and repressed desire; and its effective use of what the viewer does not see.

at People is a legendary movie—a sleeper hit of 1942 and an instant cult item praised on release by James Agee and Manny Farber—that manages, over multiple viewings, to break free from its own legend. Fans and commentators have sifted every shot and every situation of this seventy-three-minute feature, pondering each line of dialogue and taking note of each editing gimmick and trick of lighting, speculating on the implications of every archetypal motif and psychosexual frisson. Yet a fundamental mysteriousness remains, a slippery unwillingness to submit to final explanation. Cat People’s most famous gesture—keeping the object of dread concealed in the shadows, and trusting to the human impulse to people the dark with the most unspeakable fears—is only the most blatant of the many ways in which the film leaves spaces deliberately blank. It presents us with a series of unforgettable moments and obliges us to imagine connections among them.

"Cat People" is constructed almost entirely out of fear. There wasn't a budget for much of anything else. It exists on eight or nine sets, the running time is only 73 minutes, it has few special effects, there are no major stars, the violence is implied or dreaded but not much seen. Yet the film, made as a B picture for only $135,000, became RKO's top grosser for 1942.... "Cat People" wasn't frightening like a slasher movie, using shocks and gore, but frightening in an eerie, mysterious way that was hard to define; the screen harbored unseen threats, and there was an undertone of sexual danger that was more ominous because it was never acted upon....he 1942 movie gets under your skin. There is something subtly alarming about the oddly mannered good-girl behavior of Simone Simon, and the unearthly detachment of Kent Smith as her husband, and the rooms and streets that look not like places but like ideas of places. And something touching about Irena, who has never had a friend, and fears she will kill the only person she loves, and is told she is insane. At the end, Oliver pays her a simple tribute: "She never lied to us."