There's no American director who gives his movies a tonier buildup than Paul Schrader does. His interviews about his new "Cat People" … might make the picture seem mouth-watering to those who hadn't seen his "Blue Collar," "Hardcore," and "American Gigolo." But if you did see that last one you know his trouble: his movies are becoming almost as tony as the interviews…. Schrader is perfecting an apocalyptic swank. When his self-puffery about magic and myth and eroticism and about effecting a marriage between the feeling of [Jean] Cocteau's "Orpheus" and the style of Bertolucci's "The Conformist" is actually transferred to the screen in "Cat People," each shot looks like an album cover for records you don't ever want to play.
While trying to prove himself a heavyweight moralist, Schrader has somehow never mastered the rudiments of directing. He doesn't shape his sequences. In "American Gigolo," the design was stunning and the camera was always moving, but the characters were enervated and the film felt stagnant, logy; it's only energy was in Deborah Harry's singing "Call Me" during the opening credits. And in "Cat People,"…, Schrader repeatedly kills your pleasure. Just when a scene begins to hold some interest, he cuts away from it; the crucial things seem to be happening between the scenes. He's trying for a poetic, "legendary" style—which turns out to be humorless, comatose, and obscure. You can fake out interviewers if you're as smart as Schrader is, but he may be falling for his own line of gaudy patter. "Cat People" has all the furnishings for a religious narrative about Eros and Thanatos, but what's going on is that [Irena and Paul]—the sister and brother with black leopards inside them—are jumping out of their skins and leaving little puddles of guck behind. According to the film's newly minted legend, the two of them can have sex only with each other; sex with anyone else releases the beast inside, who devours the lover. The picture is often ludicrous (especially in the orange-colored primal-dream sequences), yet you don't get to pass the time by laughing, because it's so queasy and so confusingly put together that you feel shut out. You're brought into it only by the camera tricks or the special-effects horrors, or, perhaps, the nude scenes, or a strange image—such as the facade of an Art Deco church covered in lights. (pp. 130-31)
This is a free excerpt of 395 words. There are 471 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Schrader, Paul (Joseph) 1946–: Critical Essay by Pauline Kael Access Pass.
