Horrific Melodrama, Or Melodramatic Horror?
The question of genre is important to the study and analysis of film. It is also a fluid concept, as our class discussion have shown. Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1940) is an interesting film in this regard, as it stands at the nexus of a variety of genres and story forms, incorporating elements from each. This essay will compare Cat People with Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to how a film can be both horror and melodrama simultaneously, and indeed to argue that these two genres are complementary rather than contradictory. One of melodrama’s earmarks is its focus on the personal relationships and interactions of its characters - what Marcia Landy calls “A constant struggle for gratification and equally constant blockages to its attainment” (Landy 14). Horror often addresses the same concerns as melodrama in allegorical or symbolic fashion, embodying social fears, anxieties and gender struggles in literal monsters or demons. Barry Keith Grant feels that “it may be possible to see the entire genre… as about patriarchy and the challenges to it” (Grant 2). These films contain elements of both genres, which complement and play off of one another.
Although Cat People is a horror movie, its centers around character relationships. Irena is the central character, a woman tormented by her repressed sexuality and desires. She is fascinated by cats, a symbol of her repressed sexuality. Her inner demons are evident in the opening scene; she is attracted by the panther in the city zoo, and yet repulsed by it, sketching several pictures and then throwing them way - one of them, a drawing of it impaled with a dagger (shown in extreme close-up). She is obsessed with this imagery: the film repeats the image, from Irena’s drawing, to the sculpture of a Serbian King she keeps in her home - not only foreshadowing her transformation (and the film’s conclusion, where she is fatally stabbed by Doctor Judd while in panther form) but making clear that she is struggling with her inner demons - she is one of the legendary Cat People, transformed into a panther by sexual desire. Tourneur uses heavy shadows and darkness during Irena’s scenes - as well as the sequences where Alice is stalked by the big cat - to show that though Irena’s desire may repressed, it is always present. Irena attempts at self-control, and social constructs of marriage and religion - Oliver keeps Cat-Irena at bay with a cross-shaped tool at the end - keep her in check at first. She wishes to do away with her demons altogether. But Oliver is not King John, and cannot slay her demons - in the end, they overtake her.
The story is complicated by Irena's relationship with her husband, Oliver, and Oliver’s friend and co-worker Alice. Although powerfully attracted to her - “There’s a warmth from her that pulls at me” - Oliver grows weary of Irena’s bizarre, erratic behavior and personality, and feels that though married, “we are strangers in many ways”. Alice clearly loves Oliver - describing herself as “the new other woman”, who wants to help his relationship with Irena, because she “can’t stand to see him unhappy”. Irena’s Serbian ancestry adds another symbolic dimension to her character; she is the alluring, mysterious foreigner, who is both beautiful and deadly - a classic, if unwitting, femme fatale (providing us also with a link to film noir). Irena becomes jealous of Alice and begins a campaign of intimidation and revenge. This romantic triangle could take place in any number of melodramas - although it switches the usual character roles, with the sexually alluring, dangerous woman (Irena) as the wife, and the kind, loving girl (Alice) the “other woman”. It would be reasonable for critics and viewers to assume that the movie, which doesn’t veer into overt horror until the last half hour, is more of a melodrama than a horror film.
What makes Cat People a horror movie, however, is its use of fantasy and allegory. Shape-shifting and human transformation are not realistic events, but overtly fantastic ones; thus, they fall outside the generally realistic (if exaggerated) realm of melodrama. Irena’s transformation into a murderous panther (triggered by jealousy towards Alice, and later, the advances of Doctor Judd) symbolizes loss of control over her primal sexual instincts. The movie cleverly concludes with a contrived logical “explanation” for the events - Irena dies of a stab wound, a panther escapes and is then run over by a truck. With Irena dead, only the audience is privy to what really happened - a clever denouement which transports the film back into the “realistic” world of melodrama. However, the audience knows what really happened - and as a result, we know Cat People is a horror film.
Rosemary’s Baby is similarly focused on the dynamic of character relationships, interweaving elements of both horror and melodrama into its story. As in Cat People, the actual “horror” element - the birth of the anti-Christ - is largely secondary to the relationships of Rosemary Woodhouse to her husband Guy, her neighbors the Castevets, and other friends and associates. The movie deals with a myriad of issues: It is simultaneously about a marriage gone sour, a woman repressed by a close-knit social structure, and questions and fears of motherhood and pregnancy, to such an extent that the additional supernatural trappings are almost superfluous.
Rosemary’s relationship with her husband Guy is one of the key elements of the movie. Initially, the Woodhouses seem an ideal couple: young, ambitious, in love with each other. But after moving into their new apartment, their relationship begins to change. Guy becomes distant, cold and uncaring, expecting to control his wife, openly yelling and berating Rosemary when she disobeys him or takes her own initiative. He spends most of his time with the Castevets, plotting his own career advancement, leaving the pregnant Rosemary alone, vulnerable and isolated. Over the course of the film, Guy transforms from an ideal husband to the spouse from Hell - a common enough theme in melodrama, and one that enhances the terror of the film.
Another major theme of the movie is the issue of pregnancy and its intended fears and anxieties. Rosemary undergoes a decidedly unusual pregnancy: her impregnation by demonic rape, her weight loss, constant pain and pallid appearance. “What passes for Rosemary’s demented musings are consonant with representations of women’s ordinary fears of parturition” (Fischer 419). As her pregnancy develops, she transforms from a chipper, happy young woman to a haggard, helpless and weak character, easily controlled by her husband, neighbors and Doctor Saperstein. Rosemary finds herself fearing for herself and her baby, at the mercy of her associates, all of whom have a sinister agenda. The controlling society of the apartment dictates how a pregnant woman should behave - submissive, quiet and obedient. (As in Cat People, a religious element is present to show one way females are kept under male control, with overt parallels between the Satanic cult and Catholicism.) The birth of the anti-Christ is not so much a literal horror, as an allegorical representation of the fears and stigma of pregnancy and childbirth. Rosemary may initially reject her child, but ultimately “Maternal instinct triumphs; ambivalence is quashed” (Fischer 424), and she accepts it - thus, as in many melodramas, redeeming herself in the eyes of her “society”.
The film maintains trappings of melodrama throughout; the only moments of overt horror or fantasy are Rosemary’s hallucination/dream sequence of her child’s conception, and the ending, when Rosemary is confronted with her child. Everything else remains solidly within the realm of reality, however exaggerated or dramatized. Polanski enhances this by maintaining an aesthetic distance from its actions, through use of long takes and medium shots (particularly the argument between Rosemary and Guy about her stomach pains) to prevent us from relating to the characters. Polanski shuns the usual techniques of making the audience identify with the characters; as spectators, we are not supposed to have the visceral thrill one might expect from a horror film. Instead of watching two characters menaced by a monster, we’re watching a couple trapped in an unhappy marriage. If not for the Satanic child, this film could easily be a relationship drama.
In both Cat People and Rosemary’s Baby, character relationships are the driving forces of the plot. If anything, these films show that problems of family relationships are more terrifying than Satan and cat monsters combined. However, this only shows that horror and melodrama are complementary rather than divergent genres. As Grant writes, “Horror is hardly (a) simplistic, limited genre… It is simply too versatile and complex to be contained by any one theory or interpretation” (Grant 8). Landy also notes that “Melodrama traverses a number of genres” (Landy 15). We may provide a general definition of horror or melodrama, but it is inaccurate to say that two genres can’t intertwine.
Works Cited:
Cat People. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. Perf. Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt, Elizabeth Russell. RKO, 1942.
Fischer, Lucy. “Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in Rosemary’s Baby”. The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. 412-432
Grant, Barry Keith. “Introduction”. The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. 1-12
Landy, Marcia. “Introduction”. Imitations of Life: A Read on Film and Television Melodrama.
Ed. Marcia Landy. Detriot: Wayne State University Press, 1991. 13-30
Rosemary’s Baby. Dir. Roman Polanski. Perf. Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy. Paramount, 1968.
We are continuing our melodrama unit in class tonight after a week off. We watched Blonde Venus last class but I could honestly think of nothing I wanted to say about it, except to mark my shock at seeing an extremly young Cary Grant. That, and I was ill. This week's offering is Stella Dallas, and I'll have to see it before I determine if it's worthy of discussion.
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