Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows
TCM, Jan. 14 at 8p.m. & Jan. 15 at 9:15a.m., both followed by selected work
It’s possible that the greatest horror filmmaker in movie history never cried “Action” on a set. That’s because Val Lewton, whose name recalls RKO Pictures’ creepiest outings of the 1940s, always served as producer and screenwriter, not director.
Yet there’s an aesthetic reason, too: Lewton tapped into the base ingredients of chilling storytelling by focusing on the precise lack of action—an original formula that imbued any sudden development with powerfully visceral impact. In a sense, Lewton, whose work gets extensively surveyed in a retrospective airing on January 14 and 15 on Turner Classic Movies, put the “Boo!” in boring.
Gradual exposition heightens the climax in a Lewton production, rewarding viewers for putting up with the calculated pace. That the movies retain their initial potency to this day illustrates the depth of his skill and the unlikelihood that anyone else can pull it off with quite the same degree of delicacy. The TCM series kicks off with the illuminating documentary Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, directed by Lincoln Center programmer Kent Jones and narrated by Martin Scorsese. In the ensuing marathon of Lewton movies that follows—10 in all—the bold stylistic flourishes are visible throughout. Cat People, a tense supernatural drama from 1942 about a Serbian woman living in New York City whose emotional distress turns her into a violent panther, hardly bothers with special effects. Instead, Lewton insisted on subtle indicators of the big cat’s presence, particularly in a frightening moment when an approaching vehicle engine sounds remarkably similar to a vicious roar.
Such memorable cinematic accomplishments typically get credited to the director, and Lewton certainly chose some great ones. On Cat People, Leopard Man and the immeasurably brilliant I Walked With a Zombie, Lewton helped precocious helmer Jacques Tourneur launch a career of eerie thrillers and noirs. When RKO commissioned a sequel to Cat People, the producer collaborated with newcomer Robert Wise (he later directed Boris Karloff in the Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher), which means we have Lewton to thank for Wise’s work behind the camera on both The Sound of Music and Star Trek.
Nevertheless, it’s still Lewton who deserves the primary kudos for the RKO hits. Hiding in the shadows not unlike the spooks of his projects, he continually managed to shrewdly maneuver the lowbrow materials forced his way. The studio, in a rushed effort to compete with Universal’s wildly successful monster movies, gave outlandish B-movie titles to Lewton, the head of the company’s horror unit. A former MGM publicist whose early screen work included uncredited writing for Gone with the Wind, Lewton played by the rules while inventing new ones. When told to make I Walked with a Zombie, he used it for an adaptation of “Jane Eyre.” Set in Haiti with voodoo curses added to the romantic scandals of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, the resulting masterpiece (one of this critic’s all-time faves) combines melodrama with a hypnotizing dread of the unknown.
Later, RKO insisted on Curse of the Cat People for the title of the Cat People sequel, so Lewton took it and fashioned an entirely new story that had no cats or curses. Instead, it focuses on a lonely young girl whose only friend is the imagined ghost of her father’s first wife.
With these sly maneuvers, Lewton crafted a literary spookiness that became his trademark. In The Seventh Victim, which first timer Mark Robson directed after editing other Lewton efforts, a young woman falls into dangerous business with a Greenwich Village cult. Her bleak fate seems to symbolize the peril of self-imposed urban exile. You can’t find anything so morbidly entertaining on the market today. Lewton’s contemplative style is echoed in the recent Spanish release The Orphanage, and history might record contemporary knock-offs of his scare tactics in The Blair Witch Project or the oeuvre of M. Night Shyamalan. But in the era of torture porn and feeble J-horror remakes, Lewton’s meticulous creations are a retroactive revelation.
TCM, Jan. 14 at 8p.m. & Jan. 15 at 9:15a.m., both followed by selected work
It’s possible that the greatest horror filmmaker in movie history never cried “Action” on a set. That’s because Val Lewton, whose name recalls RKO Pictures’ creepiest outings of the 1940s, always served as producer and screenwriter, not director.
Yet there’s an aesthetic reason, too: Lewton tapped into the base ingredients of chilling storytelling by focusing on the precise lack of action—an original formula that imbued any sudden development with powerfully visceral impact. In a sense, Lewton, whose work gets extensively surveyed in a retrospective airing on January 14 and 15 on Turner Classic Movies, put the “Boo!” in boring.
Gradual exposition heightens the climax in a Lewton production, rewarding viewers for putting up with the calculated pace. That the movies retain their initial potency to this day illustrates the depth of his skill and the unlikelihood that anyone else can pull it off with quite the same degree of delicacy. The TCM series kicks off with the illuminating documentary Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, directed by Lincoln Center programmer Kent Jones and narrated by Martin Scorsese. In the ensuing marathon of Lewton movies that follows—10 in all—the bold stylistic flourishes are visible throughout. Cat People, a tense supernatural drama from 1942 about a Serbian woman living in New York City whose emotional distress turns her into a violent panther, hardly bothers with special effects. Instead, Lewton insisted on subtle indicators of the big cat’s presence, particularly in a frightening moment when an approaching vehicle engine sounds remarkably similar to a vicious roar.
Such memorable cinematic accomplishments typically get credited to the director, and Lewton certainly chose some great ones. On Cat People, Leopard Man and the immeasurably brilliant I Walked With a Zombie, Lewton helped precocious helmer Jacques Tourneur launch a career of eerie thrillers and noirs. When RKO commissioned a sequel to Cat People, the producer collaborated with newcomer Robert Wise (he later directed Boris Karloff in the Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher), which means we have Lewton to thank for Wise’s work behind the camera on both The Sound of Music and Star Trek.
Nevertheless, it’s still Lewton who deserves the primary kudos for the RKO hits. Hiding in the shadows not unlike the spooks of his projects, he continually managed to shrewdly maneuver the lowbrow materials forced his way. The studio, in a rushed effort to compete with Universal’s wildly successful monster movies, gave outlandish B-movie titles to Lewton, the head of the company’s horror unit. A former MGM publicist whose early screen work included uncredited writing for Gone with the Wind, Lewton played by the rules while inventing new ones. When told to make I Walked with a Zombie, he used it for an adaptation of “Jane Eyre.” Set in Haiti with voodoo curses added to the romantic scandals of Charlotte Bronte’s novel, the resulting masterpiece (one of this critic’s all-time faves) combines melodrama with a hypnotizing dread of the unknown.
Later, RKO insisted on Curse of the Cat People for the title of the Cat People sequel, so Lewton took it and fashioned an entirely new story that had no cats or curses. Instead, it focuses on a lonely young girl whose only friend is the imagined ghost of her father’s first wife.
With these sly maneuvers, Lewton crafted a literary spookiness that became his trademark. In The Seventh Victim, which first timer Mark Robson directed after editing other Lewton efforts, a young woman falls into dangerous business with a Greenwich Village cult. Her bleak fate seems to symbolize the peril of self-imposed urban exile. You can’t find anything so morbidly entertaining on the market today. Lewton’s contemplative style is echoed in the recent Spanish release The Orphanage, and history might record contemporary knock-offs of his scare tactics in The Blair Witch Project or the oeuvre of M. Night Shyamalan. But in the era of torture porn and feeble J-horror remakes, Lewton’s meticulous creations are a retroactive revelation.
