Margo in The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur, USA, 1943, 66m)
Photo courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center
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Whispers in a Distant Corridor: The Cinema of Jacques Tourneur
UNITED STATES
NEW YORK • Walter Reade Theater • Ongoing
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The sixteen-film retrospective features classics and rarely shown films.
Jacques Tourneur, son of pioneering director Maurice Tourneur (a featured
character in Bertrand Tavernier's upcoming Laissez-passer), was French-born
and made a few films in Paris before he came to America in the 30s. He began
working for MGM, doing shorts and second-unit work, and eventually graduated
to B-movies. But it was at RKO, where he teamed with visionary producer Val
Lewton on his low-budget horror unit, that Tourneur's quiet, concentrated
genius became evident.
His enormously successful Cat People (1942) is one of the most artful and
psychologically penetrating 70 minutes of film ever made, and his follow-ups
for Lewton, The Leopard Man (Manny Farber's favorite) and I Walked with a
Zombie (the director's own favorite among all his films), are arguably
better. Tourneur regretted being kicked upstairs to A-pictures, but he
continued to make excellent films right up to the end of his career, in the
mid-60s, including the watermark noir Out of the Past, the beautiful period
melodrama Experiment Perilous, the gorgeous color western Canyon Passage,
the underrated Nightfall, and the British horror classic Curse of the Demon aka Night of the Demon.
Film Society of Lincoln Center Web Site
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Tel: (1) 212 875 56 00
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