CAT OF THE DAY 100

CAT OF THE DAY 100: ALIEN (1979) & ALIENS (1986)

To mark our 100th CAT OF THE DAY, here’s one of the most popular cats in movies – Jones, from Alien. This handsome ginger puss performs multiple cat-functions. He is not just a CATGUFFIN, providing a pretext for characters to go wandering off by themselves, but also CATPANION to Ripley, giving her someone to talk to when all her crewmates have been killed off, provides several moments of CATSHOCK when he suddenly jumps out at people, and is furthermore a CATSCALLION, because you’re never quite sure, even at the end of the film, if he has been somehow been infected by the alien. (See CATEGORIES for further clarification.)

In fact, by the time we get to the sequel, seven years later, it’s quite clear Jones is an imposter, because look what 57 years of hypersleep have done! Entirely different ginger puss. Maybe the film-makers thought we wouldn’t notice.

In the event, though, it’s not Jones who turns out to have an alien inside him – the film-makers were fooling with you! – but Ripley herself. And it all turns out to be a horrible nightmare anyway.

I think we’re all agreed Prometheus would have been vastly improved by the presence of a cat.

So that’s 100 cats in 100 days (or nearly 100 – I was obliged to skip a couple when away from home and discovering, too late, that WordPress’s iPad application is useless). It has been harder work than I’d envisaged – the original idea was simply a picture with a caption, but I would sometimes get carried away – but it has also been a lot of fun. Also a pleasure reading your comments here, or on Twitter or Facebook, or even (hi Anne-Maree!) Google+.

But now CAT OF THE DAY is going on semi-sabbatical. It will continue – because I doubt I’ll ever run out of films with cats in them – but no longer on a daily basis. Possibly more like a weekly one, but I’m not going to impose a rule on myself. The cats will happen when they happen, and I hope you’ll look out for them.

In the meantime, since blogging brings in no money whatsoever, I shall try once again to flog my short story MY DAY BY JONES to you. If you ever wondered what the events of Alien looked like from Jones’s angle, here – at last – is a short story (approx 2200 words) that gives you the cat’s-eye view.

This e-story costs 99 cents to download in any format, and the price also includes samples of my other work (novels and film-writing that have previously been published elsewhere in traditional non-e form). Click on the ginger puss below to be taken to smashwords for further details. (It’s also available on amazon, but with DRM.)

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CAT OF THE DAY 099

CAT OF THE DAY 099: KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (aka MAJO NO TAKKYUBIN 魔女の宅急便) (1989)

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a Major Cat Movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki just after My Neighbour Totoro. Kiki is a 13-year-old trainee witch. It’s traditional for witches of that age to go it alone for a year, so Kiki leaves her parents’ village and flies off on a broom with her black cat Jiji. After much flying, and an interlude in a train, they come to Koriko, a bustling city by the sea, which is where Kiki decides to stay. A friendly baker allows her to live in an empty attic over the bakery, and encourages her to start a delivery service.

Jiji is a talking cat. In the original Japanese version the character is voiced by Rei Sakuma, whose voice doesn’t sound particularly female – just catlike; in the American dub distributed by Disney, she was voiced by the very masculine-sounding Phil Hartman. (I know many people love this version, so apologies to them, but I tried watching it once and didn’t get very far; maybe you have to be a fan of Sabrina the Teenage Witch to enjoy it.)

SPOILERS AFTER THE PICTURE

There’s an amusing episode where Jiji has to pose as a stuffed toy, and while Kiki is growing and learning and meeting people, Jiji starts hanging out with a white cat a couple of rooftops away. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, they’re growing apart. The part of the film that completely demolished me is when Kiki doesn’t just lose her powers of flying, but finds herself unable to communicate with Jiji anymore.

Kiki learns to fly again, but the days of talking to Jiji are over. The idea of having a lovely talking cat, but then not being able to talk to it any more, is more than I can bear; even just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. I guess that means I don’t want to grow up.

Today’s cat is dedicated to Edith.

Other Cats of the Day from Studio Ghibli:

CAT OF THE DAY 035: MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO

CAT OF THE DAY 081: WHISPER OF THE HEART

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CAT OF THE DAY 098

CAT OF THE DAY 098: BELL BOOK AND CANDLE (1958)

The stars of Hitchcock’s Vertigo reunite for a romantic comedy with a supernatural twist. Kim Novak plays Gillian Holroyd, a Greenwich Village witch; James Stewart is Shep Henderson, the mortal publisher whose personal life she decides to wreck – initially to settle an old score with a former enemy – by casting a spell to make him fall in love with her.

This was Stewart’s last romantic role, and he does seem a little mature for it; the 25 year age gap that worked perfectly within the context of Vertigo’s romantic obsession seems off-kilter here; we’re asked to believe an unconventional young woman of independent means would be attracted to someone not just old enough to be her father, but whose very demeanour is altogether quite fatherly. (Of course it might be precisely this fatherliness to which she is attracted, but that’s another matter entirely, and one for another kind of film.)

One might conceivably have accepted an equally mature Cary Grant in the role; Grant has the sort of ageless insouciant appeal that Stewart lacks, dapper and personable though he is. I’ve been trying to think of other actors I might have cast, ones adept at light comedy, but nearer Novak’s age. Rock Hudson? James Garner? Tony Randall? It’s tricky, and of course the other light comic actor of the era par excellence – Jack Lemmon – is already in the film, playing Novak’s warlock brother Nicky.

Some SPOILERS coming up after the picture.

What is incontrovertible is that Bell Book and Candle is a Major Cat Movie, and quite possibly a key proto-feminist film as well. Despite the presence of warlocks such as Nicky and the owner of the Zodiac Club, the world of the Greenwich Village witches is very obviously a matriarchy, presided over by the magnificently batty Hermione Gingold as Bianca de Passe, who charges Shep $1000 for a love charm antidote.

Gillian’s Siamese cat, Pyewacket, is not just her familiar – she casts her spells with its help – but also a symbol of her power. (I won’t make the obvious “pussy” references, but you know they’re there.) When she falls in love she loses her powers and Pyewacket deserts her. Love is not presented as a positive force but a negative one, an emotional state heralded by the first tears Gillian has ever shed. When her unrepentantly spinster Aunt Queenie (Elsa Lanchester) asks what it’s like, Gillian replies, “It’s awful.”

Portrait of a blissed-out Pyewacket.

Yes, Gillian gets her man, but has there ever been another romantic comedy in which the climactic clinch felt quite so melancholy? It’s the flipside of screwball; instead of a repressed male character loosening up, the female character must learn to repress her free-spirited urges in order to live in a world without magic.

In other words, Gillian has had to give up her identity, and the film itself (directed by Richard Quine) can’t seem to get over this; in the last scene, we leave the not-so-happy couple embracing in Gillian’s shop, and instead go outside into the street to latch on to Nicky, Queenie and Pyewacket, all no doubt destined for the further witchy adventures that Gillian herself has renounced.

PS It’s clear the cat playing Pyewacket loves Novak – whenever she’s fondling it, it gets so blissed out it’s hard to find a moment where its eyes are open.

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CAT OF THE DAY 097

CAT OF THE DAY 097: SCROOGED (1988)

[Television executive Frank Cross is talking to his boss, Preston Rhinelander.]

Preston Rhinelander: Frank, have you any idea how many cats there are in this country?

Frank Cross: No… I don’t have those… no.

Preston Rhinelander: Twenty-seven million. Do you know how many dogs?

Frank Cross: In America?

Preston Rhinelander: Forty-eight million. We spend four billion dollars on petfood alone. Now I have here a study from Hampstead University which shows us that cats and dogs are beginning to watch television. If these scientists are right, we should start programming right now. In twenty years they could become steady viewers.

Frank Cross: Progamming… for cats?

Preston Rhinelander: Walk with me, Frank. Now I’m not saying build a whole show around animals. All I’m suggesting is that we occasionally throw in a little pet appeal. Some birds, a squirrel… Mice! Exactly. You remember Kojak and the lollipops? What about a cop that dangles string?

 

Robert Mitchum and Bill Murray in a loose adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, screenplay by Mitch Glazer and Michael O’Donoghue, directed by Richard Donner.

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CAT OF THE DAY 096

CAT OF THE DAY 096: THE LIFE OF OHARU aka 西鶴一代女 (SAIKAKU ICHIDAI ONNA) (1952)

Life for a woman in 17th century Japan, even one from a respectable background, was no bed of roses. Kenji Mizoguchi’s film was adapted from The Life of an Amorous Woman, a novel by Saikaku Ihara, a popular writer of the Tokugawa period (1603-1868).

Oharu’s troubles begin when, as a young woman, she disgraces herself by having a love affair with a man below her station, a servant played by young Toshiro Mifune; he is beheaded, she and her family are exiled, after which she’s sold as a concubine to a lord, but sent home after bearing him a son. Her father sells her into prostitution, but she’s considered too arrogant to make a success of that line of work.

Then she’s employed as servant to a woman who has been keeping it a secret from her husband that illness had made her hair fall out. Unfortunately the husband finds out Oharu was a prostitute and expects freebies; the wife gets jealous and forces Oharu to cut her own hair. In revenge, Oharu persuades a cat to run off with the wife’s wig during the night, so the husband will discover her baldness.

In its brief scene, the cat looks noticeably reluctant to do anything except cling to the furniture, let alone follow Oharu’s complicated directions; she makes it sniff her own hair-piece, then orders it to go and steal a hair-piece which smells like that. And bingo! we see a frankly not very convincing silhouette of the miaowing cat making off with the wig!

As if.

A frankly not very convincing silhouette of a cat carrying a wig.

MINI-JAPANESE LESSON!

If you’ve been paying attention to previous mini-Japanese lessons, you will recognise one of the Kanji in the name of the director, Mizoguchi Kenji 溝口健二. Namely, 口 the sign for kuchi/guchi, or mouth.

The 二 (ji) at the end of Kenji is also quite easy to remember - it’s the kanji for two, and can also be pronounced ni. Mizoguchi had a sister and a brother; I’m guessing (but haven’t been able to find out for sure) that he was the second of the sons, hence the two.

The Japanese title of The Life of Oharu is 西鶴一代女 (Saikaku Ichidai Onna) which means Saikaku’s Amorous Woman (Saikaku being the name of the novelist). I don’t know all the kanji here, but that 一 in the middle is the kanji for ichi, or one.

So you can now read up to two in Japanese! Ichi 一 Ni 二.

For completion’s sake, three is (usually but not always) pronounced san and written 三. Thus Ichi 一 Ni 二 San 三. One, two, three.

(But let’s not go into Japanese counting systems, which are insanely complicated, and depend on whether you’re counting people, animals, bottles of beer, pieces of paper or household appliances.)

The 女 at the end of the Japanese title 西鶴一代女 (Saikaku Ichidai Onna) is onna, or woman (and yes! it kind of looks like a seated woman!) which is very useful if you’re looking for the ladies’ toilets (gents need to look out for the sign 男, which looks to me like a bloke with a really big head).

The 西 (sai) at the beginning of the name Saikaku is the sign for west, also pronounced nishi.

The sign for east is 東 – pronounced higashi or to, as in 東京 – Tokyo, literally Eastern Capital.

But don’t make the mistake I made, which is to assume Kyoto is simply Tokyo with the syllables reversed. The names of both cities do share the kanji 京, but Kyoto is written 京都 and literally means Capital City, since it was the imperial capital of Japan until the Emperor moved to Tokyo in 1869. Around this time, Kyoto was briefly known as 西京 Saikyo, or Western Capital.

If you’re interested in learning some more basic kanji, I can thoroughly recommend Read Japanese Today by Len Walsh: an easy, entertaining and invaluable primer in Japanese pictograms, and a fantastic first base for learning the language. The title is not an exaggeration.

CAT

My own DVD of The Life of Oharu was too dark to take a decent screengrab of Oharu and the cat. The picture at the top of this page was found on Blue Ruin 1′s Photostream.

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CAT OF THE DAY 095

CAT OF THE DAY 095: THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA (1964)

“Yes, I am Thomasina. This story’s all about me.”

Except it’s not, not really. This Walt Disney movie, adapted from the novel by Paul Gallico, is more about how the dour windowed vet played by Patrick McGoohan learns to love again – love his child (Karen Dotrice) and love the crazy witch lady who lives in the woods (Susan Hampshire) with a lot of animals.

Thomasina, though she is granted a great many close-ups and a voice-over narration (in the soft Scottish accent of Elspeth March) is really just a CATAPHOR. And if you ever doubted it, it’s spelt out for you when Hampshire says to McGoohan, “Don’t you see that Thomasina is the love your child has lost, and only you can give it back to her?”

But I like to think that Thomasina has a dark side, and that this would be closer to her real story…

Dressed in baby clothes.

Forced to wear a bib.

They think I’m docile, but I’m not. My life is hell. The brat dresses me in baby clothes. She wheels me in a pram. She deliberately drives away the birds I stalk, and forces me to eat at the dinner table, wearing a bib. Day after day after day – oh, the humiliation, the casual mental cruelty, the lack of respect. But I will have my revenge, oh yes.

One night, while stealing a fat fish from the catch on the quay, I get tetanus. The brat’s father is a vet, but he’s too busy tending to a blind man’s dog to pay me any attention, and so I get sicker and sicker, until everything thinks I’m dead. And indeed I do dream that I’m climbing a heavenly staircase, like the one in A Matter of Life and Death, up and up and up to a feline paradise full of Siamese cats, and presiding over them all – Bast, the mighty Egyptian cat god.

But I’m not dead. I go and live with the witch in the wood, and I bide my time. I wait till it’s dark and stormy and wet, and my fur is plastered against my skull. I look more like a rat than a cat. But then, I have not been my adorable fluffy self for a long, long time. And for that, I have the brat and her father to thank. I climb the tree and peer through the window. The brat is on the bed.

It’s time. Time for payback.

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CAT OF THE DAY 094

CAT OF THE DAY 094: THE VOW (2012)

Rachel McAdams loses the last five years of her memory in a car accident, reverts to the bourgeois law student she was before she left home to become a sensitive artist, and forgets she was ever married to Channing Tatum. To express his grief, Tatum takes his shirt off and adopts the stray cat he had once teased her about feeding.

If he can’t have Rachel, at least he can have the pussy. Even though he’s allergic to it.

That’s love.

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CAT OF THE DAY 093

CAT OF THE DAY 093: DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971)

After George Lazenby’s one-off appearance as James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Sean Connery agreed to reprise the role for a sixth time and a massive sum of money. This time it’s Charles Gray who plays archvillain Blofeld, whose White Cat of Evil plays a bigger than usual role as Bond tries to infiltrate an international diamond smuggling operation.

The action moves from South Africa to Amsterdam to Las Vegas, where it gets bogged down, and the final showdown on an oilrig is overextended. But compensations include Shirley Bassey belting out John Barry’s title song, Jill St John as sexy Tiffany Case (“That’s a nice little nothing you’re almost wearing,” 007 observes smarmily) and a pair of gay villains, Mr Kidd and Mr Wint, who are more interesting (and quite a lot more menacing) than Blofeld himself.

Blofeld’s White Cat of Evil made its debut in From Russia with Love. After its feline freak-out in You Only Live Twice and a brief but telling appearance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the cat is now firmly established in the audience’s eyes as a cohort of the supervillain and – since both Blofeld and Bond are a little lacklustre in this episode of the franchise – steps up to be the star of the film. No longer content with cameo roles, the cat begins as it means to go on, vying with an assortment of naked girls for the viewer’s attention during Maurice Binder’s opening credits…

By this stage in his career, even dumb Bond is aware that where the White Cat goes, Blofeld follows, but our feline fiend is once again one step ahead of the game, arranging for several lookalikes to befuddle 007′s simple brain. Bond resorts to brute violence, kicking one of the white cats towards a couple of Blofelds in their Las Vegas hideout to see which of them it will choose, but only succeeds in shooting one of the villain’s doppelgängers. “Right idea, Mr Bond,” says the real Blofeld.

James Bond kicks a cat. Boo, hiss.

“But wrong pussy,” says Bond.

Also, wrong move, and awful judgment on the part of the film-makers, because kicking a defenceless cat is a low blow, and now we have lost all sympathy for the so-called hero of the film.

But we know who the real hero is, don’t we, cat-lovers.

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CAT OF THE DAY 092

CAT OF THE DAY 092: THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1963)

The Comedy of Terrors is a very broad horror-comedy produced by Samuel Z Arkoff at AIP, and recycles some of the cast and elements from Tales of Terror (1962), on which Arkoff was Executive Producer. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur from a screenplay by Richard Matheson, and stars horror veterans Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff (originally hired to play Rathbone’s role, but severe arthritis limited his mobility) and Basil Rathbone. It also stars Rhubarb (also known as Orangey) the cat, who gets billed above Rathbone and “special guest star” Joe E Brown on the poster.

The film takes place in one of those all-purpose 19th century settings familiar from AIP’s Poe movies. Price plays an undertaker who resorts to murder to boost business, Lorre is his assistant, Rathbone their landlord, and Karloff plays Price’s ailing father-in-law, whom Price has been trying to poison. Price and Lorre try to murder their landlord, unaware that he suffers from narcolepsy; Joe E Brown, in his last film appearance, plays the cemetery keeper who witnesses one of Rathbone’s repeated returns from apparent death.

Everyone hams it up and, while it’s always a pleasure to watch these actors at work, the humour is somewhat laboured. But it’s an important movie from a feline point of view. Rhubarb plays Cleopatra, a marmalade cat whom we follow downstairs into the basement at the start of the film to get our first sight of Lorre, who is attempting to cobble together a coffin. The cat often acts as the audience’s eyes and ears; he is a classic CATAGONIST. He drinks from Karloff’s teacup, curls up on Karloff’s chest, and is shown responding to events – there’s a comic cut to his reaction as Lorre falls off a roof, he gives a visible “gulp” when he hears Price talking about poison, and covers his ears with his paws to block out the sound of Price’s wife singing.

The cat even provides the punchline to the film when he triggers an allergic reaction in the narcoleptic Rathbone. But Rhubarb’s finest moment comes during the final credits.

Each of the principal players gets a picture credit comprising a brief fragment of their performance framed by a funeral wreath, but when it comes to Rhubarb’s turn… in a moment strangely prescient of the climax of Ringu, he apparently breaks the Fourth Wall by stepping out of the wreath, and proceeds to stalk around the set while the technical credits continue to unspool over him.

Either Cleopatra is played throughout the film by the same cat, or the film-makers found some impressive doppelgingers (sic). Rhubarb aka Orangey is quite the star, gets his own entries on imdb.com and Wikipedia, and won two “Patsy” (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year) awards, one of them for his performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Related articles:

CAT OF THE DAY 003: The Three Musketeers

CAT OF THE DAY 018: Tales of Terror

CAT OF THE DAY 068: The Incredible Shrinking Man

CAT OF THE DAY 079: The Tomb of Ligeia

CAT OF THE DAY 084: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

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CAT OF THE DAY 091

CAT OF THE DAY 091: KONEKO MONOGATARI 子猫物語 (aka THE ADVENTURES OF MILO AND OTIS) (1986) 

Cute family film, not such a cute behind-the-scenes story. The adventures of Milo, an adorable ginger and white kitty, and Otis, a pug, were originally edited together by director Masanori Hata and his associate director, Kon Ichikawa (yes, the celebrated director of The Burmese Harp and Tokyo Olympiad) from over 40 hours of footage, shot over a period of four years.

The film was re-edited for the English-speaking market, and given a new title, a jaunty score, and a voice-over narration by Dudley Moore. Although the American Humane Society gave its seal of approval, it has since been alleged that over 20 kittens died during production, and that a producer broke a cat’s paw to make it seem unsteady on its feet.

Although such claims have never been verified, it’s clear when watching the film (which I did for the first time only recently) that the cats played Milo are in acute distress at numerous points. For example, swept in a small crate over a waterfall, or threatened by a bear, or attacked by seagulls, or falling (being thrown?) off a high cliff into the sea. Humane film-makers simply would not place cats in these situations.

I watched a few moments of the following clip of out-takes of the cat trying to scrabble back up the cliff (try starting at around 7:52 if you’re in a hurry), and that was more than enough for me. You may be made of stronger stuff. Whether or not any cats were actually killed during production, this is a horrible, horrible film.

CAT

MINI JAPANESE LESSON!

(Once again, should I inadvertently make any howlers, I am relying on more experienced linguists to correct me.)

The Japanese title for this film is Koneko Monogatari: 子猫物語. In English - KITTEN STORY.

If you absorbed your mini-Japanese lesson from CAT OF THE DAY 041, you will remember that 猫 (neko) is Japanese for cat.

子 (ko) signifies child (though the word for child in speech is 子供 – kodomo) and you will often see this Kanji added to children’s or girls’ names, as a diminutive suffix. For example, 洋子 (Yoko); 京子 (Kyoko); 玲子 (Reiko); 春子 (Haruko)

Hence 子猫 (koneko) means child-cat. In other words, kitten!

物語 (monogatari) is a word you will encounter many times if you are interested in Japanese culture. The first Kanji 物 (mono) literally means stuff or things, and the second Kanji 語 (gatari) literally means language, or words. Put these two kanji together and hey presto! you have monogatari, the word for written stuff, or STORY.

Thus we have the famous film by Mizoguchi Kenji - 雨月物語 (Ugetsu Monogatari), literally Story of the Rain and Moon.

Another Mizoguchi film - 平家物語 (Shin Heike Monogatari) – usually known in English as Tales of the Taira Clan.

Yet another Mizoguchi classic - 近松物語 (Chikamatsu Monogatari) – A Story from Chikamatsu (the name of an 18th century dramatist), a film better known in English as The Crucified Lovers.

Then there’s the celebrated 11th century novel (perhaps the first novel, in the modern sense of the word, written anywhere in the world) by Murasaki Shikibu – 源氏物語 (Genji Monogatari), The Tale of Genji.

語 (gatari) which as we have seen above can mean either language or words, can also be pronounced as go, as in 英語 (eigo, prounced eh-ee-go) which means English.

So if you’re looking for a Japanese DVD in English, or with English subtitles (字幕) keep your eyes peeled for the word 英語.

CAT

OTHER MINI-JAPANESE LESSONS

CAT OF THE DAY 041

CAT OF THE DAY 061

CAT OF THE DAY 081

CAT

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