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The Cat and the Canary (1927 film)

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The Cat and the Canary
Original 1927 quad poster
Directed byPaul Leni
Written byJohn Willard (play)
Walter Anthony (titles)
Alfred A. Cohn (adaptation)
Robert F. Hill (adaptation)
Produced byPaul Kohner
StarringLaura La Plante
Forrest Stanley
Creighton Hale
CinematographyGilbert Warrenton
Edited byMartin G. Cohn
Music byHugo Riesenfeld
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release dates
September 9, 1927 (USA)
Running time
82 min

The Cat and the Canary is a 1927 American silent horror film directed by German expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. The film is an adaptation of John Willard's 1922 black comedy of the same name and stars Laura La Plante as Annabelle West, Forrest Stanley as Charles "Charlie" Wilder, and Creighton Hale as Paul Jones. Annabelle inherits her uncle's fortune, but when she spends the night in his haunted mansion she is stalked by a mysterious figure. Meanwhile, a lunatic known as "the Cat" escapes from an asylum and hides in the mansion.

The Cat and the Canary is part of a genre of comedy horror films inspired by 1920s Broadway that includes Puritan Passions (1923), The Monster (1925), The Bat (1926), and The Gorilla (1927).[1] The film was one of the early Universal horror productions and is seen as "the cornerstone of Universal's school of horror."[2] Paul Leni's style of expressionism is prevalent throughout the film, making The Cat and the Canary influential in the "old dark house" genre of films popular from the 1930s through the 1950s. It has been remade five times since 1927, the most notable stars comedic actor Bob Hope.

Plot

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In a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, millionaire Cyrus West approaches death. His greedy family descends upon him like "cats around a canary", causing him to become insane. West orders that his last will and testament remain locked in a safe and go unread until the 20th anniversary of his death. As the appointed time arrives, West's lawyer, Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall), discovers a second will mysteriously appeared in the safe. The second will is only to be opened if the terms of the first will are not carried out. The maid and caretaker of the West mansion, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox), blames the manifestation of the second will on the ghost of Cyrus West, a notion that the astonished Crosby quickly rejects.

Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) is stalked in the night.

As midnight draws near, West's relatives arrive at the mansion: nephews Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe), Charles "Charlie" Wilder, Paul Jones, his sister Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) and her daughter Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor), and niece Annabelle West. Cyrus West's fortune is bequeathed to the most distant relative bearing the name West: Annabelle. The will, however, stipulates that she must first be judged sane by a doctor, Ira Lazar (Lucien Littlefield), to inherit the fortune. If she is deemed insane, the fortune is passed to the person named in the second will. The fortune includes the West diamonds which her uncle had hidden years ago. Annabelle realizes that she is now like her uncle, "in a cage surrounded by cats."

As the family prepares for dinner, a guard (George Siegmann) barges in and announces that a lunatic called the Cat escaped and is either in the house or on the grounds. The guard tells Cecily, "He's a maniac who thinks he's a cat, and tears his victims like they were canaries!" Meanwhile, Crosby suspects someone in the family might try to harm Annabelle and decides to inform her of her successor. Before he speaks the person's name, a hairy hand with long nails emerges from a secret passage in a bookshelf and pulls him in, terrifying Annabelle. When she explains what happened to Crosby, the family immediately concludes that she is insane.

File:TheCat.JPG
The Cat in a tinted version of the film released by Image Entertainment

While Annabelle sleeps, the same mysterious hand emerges from the wall behind her bed and snatches the diamonds from her neck. Once again, her sanity is questioned, but as Harry and Annabelle search the room, they discover a hidden passage in the wall and in it the corpse of Roger Crosby. Mammy Pleasant leaves to call the police, while Harry searches for the guard; Susan runs away in hysterics and hitches a ride with a milkman (Joe Murphy). Paul and Annabelle return to her room to search for the missing envelope, and discover Crosby's body is now missing. Paul vanishes as the secret passage closes behind him. Wandering in the hidden passages, Paul is attacked by the Cat and left for dead. He regains consciousness in time to rescue Annabelle. The police arrive and arrest the Cat, who is Charlie Wilder in disguise; the guard is his accomplice. Wilder is the person named in the second will, and hoped to drive Annabelle insane to receive the inheritance.

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Production

The Cat and the Canary is the product of early 20th century German expressionism. According to art historian Joan Weinstein, expressionism is a loosely defined term that includes the art styles of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, cubism, futurism, and abstraction. The key element that connects these styles together is the concern for the expression of inner feelings over verisimilitude to nature.[3] Film historian Richard Peterson notes that "German cinema became famous for stories of psychological horror and for uncanny moods generated through lighting, set design and camera angles." Such filmmaking techniques drew on expressionist themes. Influential examples of German expressionist film include Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) about a deranged doctor and Paul Leni's Waxworks (1925) about a wax figure display at a fair.[4]

Waxworks impressed Carl Laemmle, the German-born president of Universal Pictures. Laemmle was struck by Leni's departure from expressionism by the inclusion of humor and playfulness in the midst of grotesque scenes.[4] Meanwhile in the United States, D. W. Griffith's One Exciting Night (1922) began a Gothic horror film trend that Laemmle wanted to capitalize as subsequent films in the genre like Frank Tuttle's Puritan Passions and Roland West's The Monster and The Bat—all adaptations of Broadway stage plays—proved successful.[1][5]

Laemmle turned to John Willard's popular play The Cat and the Canary about an heiress whose family tries to drive her insane to steal her inheritance. Willard was hesitant to give Laemmle permission to film his play, as film historian Douglas Brode explains, "because that would have exposed to virtually everyone the trick ending, ... destroying the play's potential as an ongoing moneymaker." Nevertheless, Willard was convinced and the play was adapted into a screenplay by Alfred A. Cohn and Robert F. Hill.[6]

Casting

The cast of The Cat and Canary included veteran silent film stars Laura La Plante, Creighton Hale, and Forrest Stanley. La Plante was cast as heiress Annabelle West. She had played roles in more than 50 films before starring in The Cat and the Canary. Her more prominent roles included Norine Tyrell/Olive Sloan in Crooked Alley (1923), Betty Rockford in Sporting Youth (1924), and Dorothy Vale in Smouldering Fires (1925).[7] According to film historian Gary Don Rhodes, La Plante's role in The Cat and the Canary is typical for women in horror and mystery films: "The female in the horror film ... becomes the hunted, the quarry. She has little to do, and so the question becomes 'What will be done with her?'" Rhodes adds, "The heroines are young and beautiful, but represent more a prize to be possessed—whether 'stolen' by a villain or 'owned' by a young hero at the film's conclusion."[8] Following The Cat and the Canary, La Plante found a successful career with Universal and starred in several talkies. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before her death in 1996 of Alzheimer’s disease.[7]

Cast of The Cat and the Canary (from the left): Flora Finch, Gertrude Astor, Creighton Hale, Forrest Stanley, Laura La Plante, and Arthur Edmund Carewe

Universal chose Irish actor Creighton Hale to play the role of the hero Paul Jones, Annabelle's cousin. Hale had appeared in 64 silent films prior to The Cat and the Canary, notably the 1914 serial The Exploits of Elaine and D. W. Griffith's Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1921).[9] Hale's role in The Cat and the Canary was to provide comedic relief. According to critic John Howard Reid, "He is forever backing into furniture or finding himself in a risqué position under a bed or wrestling with stray objects like falling books or enormous bed-springs."[10] Unlike La Plante, Hale later had trouble finding a solid career in sound film. Many of his parts were minor and often uncredited.[9]

The villain Charles Wilder was played by Forrest Stanley, an actor who had been cast in films such as Bavu (1923), Through the Dark (1924) and Shadow of the Law (1926). After his performance in The Cat and the Canary, Stanley played lesser roles in films such as Show Boat (1936) and Curse of the Undead (1959) and the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Studio 57, and Gunsmoke.[11]

The film contained a supporting cast referred to by one film historian as "second-rate"[12] and "excellent" by another.[10] Tully Marshall played the suspicious lawyer Roger Crosby, Martha Mattox was cast as the sinister and superstitious housekeeper Mammy Pleasant, Gertrude Astor and Flora Finch played greedy relatives Cecily Young and Aunt Susan Sillsby, respectively.[13] Lucien Littlefield was cast as deranged psychiatrist Dr. Ira Lazar who bore an eerie resemblance to Werner Krauss's title character in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.[14]

Directing

As Universal anticipated, director Paul Leni turned Willard's play into an expressionist masterpiece suited to an American audience. Historian Bernard F. Dick observes that "Leni reduced German expressionism, with its weird chiaroscuro, asymmetric sets, and excessive stylization, to a format compatible with American film practice."[15] Jenn Dlugos argues that that "many stage play movie adaptations [of the 1920s] fall into the trap of looking like 'a stage play taped for the big screen' with minimal emphasis on the environment and plenty of stage play overacting."[16] This, however, was not the case for Leni's film. Richard Scheib notes that "Leni's style is something that lifts The Cat and the Canary up and away from being merely a filmed stage play and gives it an amazing visual dynamism."[17]

Leni used similar camera effects found in German expressionist films such as the The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to set the atmosphere of The Cat and the Canary. The film opens with a hand wiping cobwebs away to reveal the title credits. Other effects include "dramatic shadows, portentous superimpositions and moody sequences in which the camera glides through corridors with billowing curtains."[4] Leni worked to with the cast to add to the mood created by lighting and camera angles. Cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton recalled that Leni used a gong to startle the actors. Warrenton mused, "He beat that thing worse than the Salvation Army beat a drum."[18]

While the film contains elements of horror, according to film historian Dennis L. White the film "is structured with an end other than horror in mind. Some scenes may acheive horror, and some characters dramatically experience horror, but for these films conventional clues and a logical explanation, at least an explanation plausible in hindsight, are usually crucial, and are of necessity their makers' first concern."[19]

Besides directing, Leni was a painter and set designer. The sets of the film were designed by Leni and fabricated by Charles D. Hall, who later designed the sets of Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931).[20] Leni hoped to eschew realism for visual designs that reflected the emotions of characters. He wrote, "It is not extreme reality that the camera perceives, but the reality of the inner event, which is more profound, effective and moving than what we see through everyday eyes. ..."[4] Leni went on to direct the Charlie Chan film The Chinese Parrot (1927), The Man Who Laughs (1928), and The Last Warning (1929) before his death in 1929 of blood poisoning.[21]

Reception, criticism, and influence

A theatrical poster emphasizing aspects of the film, particulary the "cat and the canary" and the mysterious, sinister hand.

The Cat and the Canary debuted in New York City's Colony Theater on September 9, 1927.[10] Variety opined, "What distinguishes Universal's film version of the...play is Paul Leni's intelligent handling of a weird theme, introducing some of his novel settings and ideas with which he became identified...The film runs a bit overlong...Otherwise it's a more than average satisfying feature..."[22] The New York Times wrote that for "the first time ... a mystery melodrama has been lifted into the realms of art."[23] Nonetheless, as film historian Bernard F. Dick points out, "[e]xponents of Caligarisme, expressionism in the extreme ... naturally thought Leni had vulgarized the conventions [of expressionism]". Dick, however, notes that Leni had only "lighten[ed] [expressionist themes] so they could enter American cinema without the baggage of a movement that had spiraled out of control."[15]

Modern criticism of the film is mostly laudatory. Michael Atkinson of The Village Voice remarks, "[Leni's] adroitly atmospheric film is virtually an ideogram of narrative suspension and impact"[24] while Chris Dashiell complains that "[e]verything is so exaggerated, so lacking in subtlety, that we soon stop caring what happens, despite a few mildly scary effects." Still, critics admit that the film "had a great effect on the horror genre, and even Hitchcock cited it as an influence."[25]

Although not the first film set in a haunted house, The Cat and the Canary proved to be influential, setting the pattern for the "old dark house" genre.[26] The term is derived from English director James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932), which was heavily influenced by Leni's film,[27] and refers to "films in which murders are committed by masked killers in old mansions."[28] Other films in this genre influenced by The Cat and the Canary include House on Haunted Hill (1959), the works of Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy.[29][30]

A tinted version was released on both VHS and DVD in 1997 and 2005 by Image Entertainment. The original black and white version airs infrequently on the cable television network Turner Classic Movies.

Remakes

The Cat and the Canary has been remade five times since the premier of the 1927 silent film. Rupert Julian's The Cat Creeps (1930) and the Spanish language La Voluntad del muerto (1930) directed by George Melford and Enrique Tovar Ávaloswere were the first talkie remakes of the film; they were produced and distributed by Universal Pictures.[31][32] Neither film was as influential as the original and no copies of The Cat Creeps are known to exist.[33]

Elliott Nugent's The Cat and the Canary (1939) proved far more successful than the 1930 versions. The film was produced by Paramount and stars comedic actor Bob Hope. Hope plays Wally Campbell, a character who was based on Creighton Hale's performance as Paul Jones. One critic suggests, however, that Hope developed the character better than Hale and is more funny and engaging.[10] Other remakes include Katten och kanariefågeln (1961), a Swedish language television film directed by Jan Molander,[34] and The Cat and the Canary (1979), a British film directed by Radley Metzger.[35]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 95, ISBN 0415026067.
  2. ^ Carlos Clarens, An Illustrated History of Horror and Science-Fiction Films: The Classic Era, 1895-1967 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1997), p. 56, ISBN 0306808005.
  3. ^ Joan Weinstein, The End of Expressionism: Art and the November Revolution in Germany, 1918-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 3, ISBN 0226890597.
  4. ^ a b c d Richard Peterson, liner notes, The Cat and the Canary (DVD, Image Entertainment, 2005).
  5. ^ Ian Conrich, "Before Sound: Universal, Silent Cinema, and the Last of the Horror Spectaculars," in The Horror Film, ed. Stephen Price, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004), p. 47, ISBN 0813533635.
  6. ^ Douglas Brode, Edge of Your Seat: The 100 Greatest Movie Thrillers (New York: Citadel Press, 2003), p. 32, ISBN 0806523824.
  7. ^ a b Laura La Plante at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  8. ^ Gary Don Rhodes, White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001), p. 19, ISBN 0786409886.
  9. ^ a b Creighton Hale at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  10. ^ a b c d John Howard Reid, These Movies Won No Hollywood Awards (Lulu Press, 2005), p. 39, ISBN 1411658469.
  11. ^ Forrest Stanley at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2004.
  12. ^ Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Owl Books, 1996), p. 89, ISBN 0805046666.
  13. ^ Full Cast and Crew for The Cat and the Canary, Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  14. ^ Clarens, Illustrated History of Horror, p. 57.
  15. ^ a b Bernard F. Dick, City of Dreams: The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 56, ISBN 0813120160.
  16. ^ Jenn Dlugos, review of The Cat and the Canary DVD, at Classic-Horror; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  17. ^ Richard Scheib, review of The Cat and the Canary, at The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  18. ^ Gilbert Warrenton, quoted in Kevin Brownlow, "Annus Mirabilis: The Film in 1927," Film History 17 (2005): p. 173.
  19. ^ Dennis L. White, "The Poetics of Horror: More than Meets the Eye," Cinema Journal 10 (No. 2, Spring 1971): p. 5.
  20. ^ John T. Soister, Up from the Vault: Rare Thrillers of the 1920s and 1930s (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), p. 69, ISBN 0786417455.
  21. ^ Paul Leni at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  22. ^ Variety review of The Cat and the Canary, quoted in Roy Kinnard, Horror In Silent Films: A Filmography, 1896-1929 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1995), p. 200, ISBN 0786407514.
  23. ^ New York Times review, quoted in Peterson, liner notes.
  24. ^ Michael Atkinson, review of The Cat and the Canary DVD, The Village Voice (New York), March 3, 2005, available here.
  25. ^ Chris Dashiell, review of The Cat and the Canary, at CineScene.com; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  26. ^ Schatz, Genius of the System, p. 88.
  27. ^ Clarens, Illustrated History of Horror, p. 57.
  28. ^ Jeffrey S. Miller, Horror Spoofs of Abbott and Costello: A Critical Assessment of the Comedy Team's Monster Films (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), p. 2, ISBN 0786419229.
  29. ^ Miller, Horror Spoofs, pp. 2-3.
  30. ^ Joseph Maddrey, Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), p. 40, ISBN 0786418605.
  31. ^ Company credits for The Cat Creeps at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  32. ^ Company credits for La Voluntad del muerto, at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2004.
  33. ^ John T. Soister, Up from the Vault: Rare Thrillers of the 1920s and 1930s (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), p. 74, ISBN 0786417455.
  34. ^ Katten och kanariefågeln at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2007.
  35. ^ The Cat and the Canary at the Internet Movie Database; last accessed January 4, 2007.

Further reading

  • Everson, William K. American Silent Film. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998. ISBN 0306808765.
  • Hogan, David. Dark Romance: Sexuality in the Horror Film. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997. ISBN 0786404744.
  • Horak, Jan-Christopher. "Sauerkraut and Sausages with a Little Goulash: Germans in Hollywood, 1927." Film History 17 (2005): pp. 241-260.
  • MacCaffrey, Donald W., and Christopher P. Jacobs. Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. ISBN 0313303452.
  • Petrie, Graham. Hollywood Destinies: European Directors in America, 1922-1931. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002. ISBN 0814329586.
  • Prawer, S. S. Caligari's Children: The Film as Tale of Terror. New York: Da Capo Press, 1989. ISBN 030680347X.
  • Worland, Rick. The Horror Film: A Brief Introduction. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. ISBN 1405139021.
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