Val Lewton

Kris and I watched The 7th Victim last evening, a spooky noir-ish story about a young woman trying to track down her missing sister, and runs into a secretive group of (as opposed to a bunch of showboat) Satanists. Which sounds sensationalized, and for a film from the ’40s portends some obvious schlocky “evil” (pronounced, a la Kevin McDonald, EEEE-villllll). It ain’t; like Lewton’s other productions, this is spooky, intelligent.

Yes, yes: it’s marked by acting styles that strike us moderns as funny. But the film’s narrative is conmplicated, and markedly (blessedly) absent of exposition–it takes quite a while to suture together what’s going on, and even then our understanding is often more allusive and elusive than complete.

And that subtle sense of the uncanny, shading the stuff we see with portents of a greater and scarier significance, is in every way amplified by the gorgeous production design and the fantastic lighting/composition. You can see–in its themes of anomie and unhappiness, as well as its attention to light and shadow, in the city–a cousin or even ancestor to the emerging film noir.

Really liked it; I now have to go back and get a hold of more of Lewton’s films, all reissued recently in great 2-film dvds. I’ve seen Cat People, which is excellent, but none of the others. (Victim, the one I saw, includes a good documentary on Lewton, which in addition to some good concise history also has appreciations from a whole range of filmmakers.)