Val Lewton Notice

Stopping in mid-week to note the ongoing Val Lewton blogathon, being hosted by Michael Guillen at The Evening Class. There is a wealth of material there and throughout the blogosphere, devoted to one of the undersung masters of film.

I have to admit, I came late to Lewton's iflms. People talked about them, they sounded good, but I hadn't seen any of them until the middle of last year, when I found a cheap copy of Cat People - very impressive. And later, I got the I Walked With A Zombie/Body Snatcher DVD, and that really did it. They're the type of films you can live with - stripped down and simple, in some ways, but with ever shot, every detail infused with intellegence and mystery, revealing something new every time you watch them. And thematically sophisticated - with complex patterns of guilt and innocence, interesting, ambiguous, motivations and results. Look at the way culpability is passed along from character to character in the Leopard Man, or the way good comes out of evil (Karloff the Body Snatcher directly leading to the cure of the little girl, etc.) in other films....

Coming at the end of the second contemplative cinema blogathon, it's intriguing how well the Lewton films fit. The stripped down style, the atmospheric style, working through suggestion and indirection, their treatment of plot (shifting protagonists, delaying revelations of characters' or events' significance, and so on), even some of the specific devices - mutism and silence; use of shadows, etc.... The links are pretty straightforward, too - Pedro Costa speaks of remaking I Walked With a Zombie in Casa de Lava; Tropical Malady draws heavily on Cat People. You can see the influence, and certainly, filmmakers are clear about the influence of Lewton and Tourneur (in particular.) They are wonderful films, and it's great fun reading about them.