“… not the first of its kind, but it is one of the few hybrids that succeeds in spoofing old-dark-house clichés – secret passageways gaping open, monstrous hands extending slowly towards unwitting victims – while remaining genuinely spooky.”
Imogen Sara Smith from her booklet essay, Laughter in the Shadows
The Cat and the Canary represents a peak of silent film technique and is as good
as almost any silent film made in Twenties’ Hollywood, a defining, genre-defining classic. It is not so much a horror classic but a major
step forward in spooky-comedy, paving the way not just for Bob Hope’s talkie
remake but a whole sub-genre of scarily-funny movies. Paul Leni’s film looks
great and takes many visual tropes from the German style and injects laughs
into the resultant combination of eerie unease. From the opening titles,
showing the title revealed by a horned hand wiping away the dust, it makes its
intentions known and it really does achieve that balance between the
unexpected, the unnerving and the uncannily-timed.
From previous viewing of Kevin Brownlow’s Photoplay 35mm at
the Kennington Bioscope, I knew that the film had long languished in poor
quality until the 1960s when he found a good print and restored it from 35mm
nitrate. Eureka’s new restoration is a 4k transfer from a recent digital restoration
that looks as good as the day it was first edited together, especially in
Blu-ray quality: never darker, sharper or more ominous…
The Cat and the Canary it parodies what had yet to be
termed as “horror”, which hadn’t really started to dominate film, although it
was popular on stage, where this story began John Willard’s 1923 stage play. Whilst
it’s one of Universal’s big three foundational shockers, along with Hunchback
and Phantom, it’s also a continuation of the German style, expressionist
as well as existentially oppressive in the manner of Caligari, Student
of Prague, Golem and Leni’s own Waxworks. It meets a lot of
Lotte Eisner’s Expressionist criteria with unsettling frames and deep shadows alive
with menace.
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| Do not mess with Laura La Plante's hair!! |
Kevin Brownlow interviewed the camera man, Gilbert
Warrenton, who told him that they had to dig into the floor to get those acute angles and he also explained that extra lights were also needed to create the
right dynamics between dark and darker. Leni used a gong to drill his player’s
movements and claimed that the shadows were as important to the film as the
characters… and so it was to prove.
It starts with a dark and stormy night, as it simply had to,
but the collaborator of Lubitsch, May, Dupont and a host of European
filmmakers, knows what he was doing… The opening section shows mad old Cyrus
West’s spires cross fade into milk bottles which imprison him, wheelchair
bound, as viscous black cats encircle this crippled canary: his greedy
relatives waiting to get their share of his fortune all, as set out in his
will, to be unveiled twenty years after his death.
The action moves to the interior of the West mansion and Leni treats us to the works, wonderfully lit settings with Warrenton’s camera swooping round corners with alarming grace then careering down blustery corridors as drapes and curtains fly wildly in the wind. This is a place full of dark surprise, bad humour and menace.
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| Here's Mammy! Martha Mattox |
There’s a knock on the old door and West’s faithfully grim
retainer, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox) – not very motherly or, indeed,
pleasant – opens the door which is almost held back by sheer weight of cobwebs.
Enter Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) West’s lawyer, here on the dot, two decades
after his death to reveal the contents of the will. Opening the safe he finds a
moth and knows someone has forewarned themselves of the contents… but no one
else has been in the house only Mammy and her un-living companion who stares
down with intent from his portrait.
The guests, all soon to be suspects, all save the murdered… arrive and Leni gives us portraits of people with something to hide; eyes darting, greed nervously bubbling just under the surface and desperation enough to make anyone of them suspicious. There’s Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who’s already dark eyes take on additional edginess and who almost snarls as his estranged cousin Charles "Charlie" Wilder (Forrest Stanley) arrives. Charles looks like our leading man, but there's a nervousness around the eyes and a mouth that suggests weakness and desperation.
Their more senior cousin Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) arrives with her niece Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor) both clinging on to the hope that there will be a windfall to compensate for the many obvious disappointments that have etched themselves on their faces: Susan old with bitterness and Cecily just on the cusp as youth fades. Cue the comedy. Paul Jones (Creighton Hale) arrives in a miss-firing motor car, breaking to avoid crossing the path of a black cat and then running into the house convinced his engine’s back-fire was an assassin’s bullet. He’s no Bob Hope - more Ernie Wise - but he’s funny alright.
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| Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch and Creighton Hale |
The entourage is completed by the arrival of Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) – youngest of the group and seemingly as sane as sixpence. La Plante takes top billing on the film and had some of the sharpest haircuts in all of silent film not to mention costumes which is pretty much all she remembered when later interviewed by Kevin Brownlow. All the same, I’m sure she’s one of his favourites!
Anna is revealed as the sole beneficiary and therefore becomes another Canary and the trick is to work out who the Cat(s) might be with pretty much everyone looking as guilty as can be… personally I was hoping it might be Creighton Hale. The mysterious deaths begin to happen, sliding panels start to reveal clawed hands and an escaped lunatic is revealed to be on the loose. What’s more, Annabelle must be proven sane in order to qualify for her prize or else her inheritance will go to another.
Who’ll it be? And will anyone from this strange family
emerge as the unlikely hero to protect the true heir? There’s the usual
miss-direction and emotional disturbance of the humour but it’s still a fun
watch: golden rule of all whodunits… make ‘em all look guilty and then
gradually provide them with alibis/good character.
The film looks fabulous on this 1080p HD presentation from a 4K digital restoration of the original negatives supplied by MoMA.|There's also a fascinating new score from Robert Israel -presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1, it says here - which has been compiled, synchronised and edited by Gillian B. Anderson, based on the music cue sheets compiled and issued for the original 1927 release.
Ultimately, it’s hard to disagree with Kevin Brownlow when he said, again at the Kennington Bioscope, that The Cat and the Canary is a commercial film, superbly well-made and one that is critically under-recognised, certainly it had a major influence on the epic Universal horrors of the thirties, especially James Whale’s Cold Dark House, and way beyond, through Bob Hope’s version in 1939 and onto an entire backlot of scary mansions spoofed so well in Scooby Doo.
If it hadn’t been for those pesky German kids, Leni’d never
have gotten away with it…
Extra frightening features:
Limited Edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Graham Humphreys [First print run of 2000 copies]
Two brand new audio commentaries: Stephen Jones and Kim Newman plus Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby
Mysteries Mean Dark Corners – brand new video essay by David Cairns & Fiona Watson
Pamela Hutchinson interview – excellent new discussion with writer and film critic Pamela Hutchinson who, as you would expect, thoroughly contextualizes the film, the director and the cast.
Phuong Le interview – another newly commissioned interview with film critic Phuong Le who explains the differences between the film and the play and looks at Leni's aims in making a "non-European, American film
A Very Eccentric Man & Yeah, a Cat! – extracts
from John Willard’s original play
Lucky Strike – Paul Leni gives a full-throated
endorsement to the product that got him through filming The Cat and the Canary
A collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the
film by Richard Combs, Craig Ian Mann, and Imogen Sara Smith
Whilst Eureka were kind enough to send me a review copy I’ve
already pre-ordered the fill set with all the above limited-edition trimmings. There’s
still time for you to do the same, the Blu-ray is released on 22nd
April in the UK and you can order it direct from Eureka using this link.
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