SPOILER ALERT: Don't continue reading, if you haven't watched the film!
What was the deal with the old lady and her "daughter" (?!) that she kept calling a cheat and an imposter? Was she a ghost too, was Barbara really dead? Or was the old lady just crazy? Somebody, who can explain this for me?
Much of this was unexplained. I'm afraid that a lot of this enchanting movie relating to those two was edited and cut. Is there a more complete and unedited version someplace?
shareI just watched the film, and as far as I can tell, the old lady had some mental problem such as schizophrenia or dementia. Her delusion about her daughter being an "imposter" caused her daughter great pain and sorrow. Finally the daughter's rejection by her mother caused her to be consumed with bitterness until she was mad herself. Nice family.
shareThe Capgras delusion theory (or Capgras syndrome) is a disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor.
shareWhat would all that have to do with the rest of the film?
shareI think there was a movie here that didn't get made because it ran over time and over budget.
I believe there were parallel stories; the father - daughter and the old lady and her daughter.
The old lady's daughter clearly was in great emotional pain over her mother's rejection, and heartbreakingly, this doesn't get resolved. No one ever reached out to the old lady's daughter; there was no friend for her, and her mother doesn't grow the way the little girl's father grows.
Had this been developed further and more connections made between the child's loneliness and the adult daughter's problems with her mother, this movie would now be considered a ground-breaking classic.
Toward the end of the movie, there was a point in which the little girl might have bonded with the rejected daughter, but the moment passed.
I also believe the title was just awful. The movie missed it's audience because of it. The audience that came to see it looking for a scary sequel to "Cat People" were dissapointed, and the audience looking for a sensitve treatment of a child's inner emotional life didn't know about this movie.
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As I was watching the end of this I was thinking: I know it wasn't meant to be a horror film, and it had a sort of melancholy sweetness to it, almost saccharine. But it occurred to me that the horror element could have been injected, and by today's filmmaker almost certainly would have been. Barbara, the old lady's "daughter," threatens to strangle Amy, then gets her chance. The way it worked out was sort of lyrical, but it could just as easily have gone this way: When she begins to strangle her, Amy calls for her "friend," Irena, who appears and transforms into the snarling cat of the first movie, thereby saving her and dispatching Barbara. Just a thought. btw, the Headless Horseman is pretty much a red herring.
This film is pretty patchwork as alluded too by director Robert Wise(who took over direction from Gunther Fritsch)on either the commentary to this or Lewton's The Body Snatcher,so its not all there...There was more to the Barbara Faron character I think..Altho I'm satified with the way it is myself.Elizabeth Russell is terrific in this..I feel total sympathy..
share" its not all there"
I think that's the case too. I would love to see an uncut version of this film, but of course the parts that were cut are long gone.
The commentary track on the DVD has a bit on this.
In the original script the old woman had had an accident when her daughter was 6 (the same age as young Amy) and lost her memory, which is why she insists her daughter died as a child and that Barbara is an imposter.
The parallel with the Reed family is that Amy is going to turn into someone like Barbara unless she gets some love at home pretty quickly.
Val Lewton put a lot of himself into this film. The magic mailbox tree is from his childhood, and he lived near Tarrytown then.
The studio picked all of his titles, of course. He had no control over that.
I always interpreted it as Barbara was a disappointment to the old woman and that was why she kept saying she no longer had a daughter. That the old woman heaps love on Amy while saying that she's "dead" eats away at Barbara and she threatens to kill Amy. However, when she gets her chance, Amy's own delusions take over and she sees her as her "friend" Irena and she hugs Barbara. This is probably the only act of love that Barbara has felt in years and that is what stops her from killing Amy.
Yippee: "For king!"
Yappee: "For country!"
Yahooie: "And, most of all, for 10¢ an hour!"
> The commentary track on the DVD has a bit on this.
I just watched it with the commentary track on, and that was a very helpful track. I've forgotten the guy's name - Mank? Who was he?
Greg Mank: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0995256/
-Bill
Thanks. There's not much information on him in the interwebs - he seems to have an interest in horror movies, and I thought his commentary was interesting and funny in the right places.
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It was, and IS Greg Mank. Mr. Mank has just released his newest book, A WITCHING TIME OF NIGHT. There are 13 exquisitely detailed essays on various Horror Actors and films. One of the best is detailed information on the two CAT PEOPLE films, and the memories of Ann Carter. if you want to find out about the films, as well as small details about shooting schedules, budgets and ballyhoo...as well rotten editing that destroyed Lewton's vision, you'll find it here.
BTW, The intended name for the movie was AMY AND HER FRIEND. RKO thought it was too "tame", and changed it to CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE.
Check on Amazon.com for the book, under the name "GREGORY W. MANK".
"I do hope he won't upset Henry.."
I have to watch it again. Does anyone besides Amy and the old woman ever see Barbara? She walks away when Amy is found at the end of the movie and no one sees her then. I can't remember if anyone ever sees her.
It would be a cool twist if Barbara were a ghost too, a ghost that didn't find peace. But I guess as a ghost she wouldn't have aged, so that's probably why she can't be a ghost.
"First I dream my painting and then I paint my dream."--Vincent van Gogh
Barbara is visible to the others as well as Amy and Barbara's mother. I'm trying to remember one thing though: do Amy and Irena have any physical contact with each other? If not, then Barbara wouldn't be a ghost because Amy is able to hug her when Barbara's mother dies.
Yippee: "For king!"
Yappee: "For country!"
Yahooie: "And, most of all, for 10¢ an hour!"
Irena kisses Amy at one point, and takes the pin from her. Barbara was certainly real. As others have pointed out, there was an intentional parallel between Amy and her father on the one side and Barbara and her mother on the other. In a way, I liked the underdevelopment of the Barbara story, because it leaves open the possibility that she really was an impostor.
As for Irena, that was ambiguous too. On the one hand, Amy doesn't decide that her "friend" is really Irena until after she has seen a photograph of Irena, implying that "Irena" was completely imaginary. On the other hand, when Irena appears to Amy after her nightmare, Oliver suddenly becomes distracted as if he is aware of Irena's presence in the house.
The best I could figure , is that this Mother/Daughter subplot, was to perhaps show that the ghost was not there to do the child harm. Or, perhaps, to show something in common that would allow the woman and the child to bond i.e both were haunted in a sense. Other than that, Mom/Daughter just doesn't seem to add an element.
shareSo many of interpretations, none of them necessarily right or wrong. My reading was the old lady was a ghost that spoke to the young girl, and Barbara was her daughter coming to terms with her death (with the help of another ghost, Irena). In that regard, this film was way ahead of its time.
shareThis is an old thread but I'm going to answer anyway. The old lady wasn't a ghost because the servant also spoke to her. More importantly, at the end, when the men find the little girl in the house, one of the searchers sees the old woman on the stairs and runs to check her out. Nice theory, though.
When I first saw it the woman and her daughter element seemed relatively clear that the woman either was suffering from senility or in later years the idea hit that maybee she had disowned her daughter for some reason.
A decade or two later though my own grandmother suffered an accident and her mind slipped away, she no longer recognized anyone and eventually fell into a hidious state of living death. Saying only one word and... squirming all the time... This had a severe impact on my mothers mental stability too.
Two friends now have also gone through cases like in the movie with their parents suffering a illness or accident and thereafter lapsing where they do not recognize their children.
Sometimes movies fiction can mirror the real world with scary simmilarities.
It says in the original script that Barbara, the old lady's daughter, is Irena's sister (a cat woman). That is why the old woman said she's an imposter but the new director changed parts. She's also Irena's sister in the original film.
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