The Leopard Man vs. Hardboiled

Introduction

The following is my response to Elliot Lavine’s analysis of The Leopard Man, which he posted on the website, The Blackboard, on December 14, 2009. (The Addendum below provides his text.) Elliot has regularly hosted some of the most interesting and important film noir series at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, where he is the Director of Repertory Programming. In 2010 the “Marlon Riggs Award” was bestowed upon him by the San Francisco Film Critics’ Circle for his “two decades of film programming, his revival of rare archival and independent titles and his role in the renewed popularity of film noir and pre-Production Code features.” He also teaches courses for Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program.

Main Credits

Director: Jacques Tourner. Screenplay: Adel Wray based on the novel, Black Alibi, by Cornell Woolrich. Producer: Val Lewton. Cinematographer: Robert DeGrasse. Music: Roy Webb. Art Directors: Albert S. D’Agostino, Walter E. Keller. Editor: Mark Robson. Cast: Dennis O’Keefe (Jerry Manning), Margo (Ci0-Cio), Jean Brooks (Kiki Walker), James Bell (Dr. Galbraith). Released: RKO Radio Pictures, May 8, 1943. 66 minutes.

Presentation

The follow plot summary comes from Michael F. Keaney’s Film Noir Guide: 745 Films of the Classic Era, 1940-1959, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003).

“[I]t’s about a series of killings, supposedly by an escaped leopard, in a small New Mexico town. (The leopard had been part of a selfish publicity stunt by nightclub dancer Brooks and her agent [O’Keefe] to overshadow a performance by rival performer Margo. When Margo frightened the leopard with her castanets, it escaped into the night killing a teenage girl.) But O’Keefe and Brooks are convinced that the next two victims have been torn apart by a more dangerous predator – a psychopathic killer. Unable to persuade the local police department and its civilian adviser (Bell), the two investigate on their own.” (252)

At the beginning of his Noir Of The Week, Elliot Lavine characterizes The Leopard Man as “film noir to its very core, carrying with it the customary load of unbridled cynicism and the fabled fatalism that typifies this film style. And although the events that unfold in the story are indeed horrific, its style and thematic content place it squarely at the center of the noir universe.”

Elliot presents a detailed description of what happens in the film. His last sentences are, “Raoul [the boyfriend of one of the Leopard Man’s victims] pulls out a gun and fires at Galbraith [the Leopard Man], killing him instantly. The Leopard Man is a film of unrelenting sadness made by people who clearly understood the true meaning of Cornell Woolrich’s demented poetry. For these people are the damned, the doomed, and the eternally forlorn; the perpetual inhabitants of the world of noir.”

My intent isn’t to claim that The Leopard Man cannot be called a film noir. What I want to show is that Elliot’s characterizations about the film, such as its “cynicism” and “fatalism,” only pertain to the “thematic content” of the film in order to be rejected. The rejection of “cynicism” and “fatalism” occurs in a scene Elliot leaves out, which is the final scene of the film, after Raoul kills Galbraith.

As the chief of police tells Raoul that he will have to stand trial for murder, Jerry and Kiki step outside the police station. The conversation between the two lovers is as follows.

Kiki: We stood here once before.

Jerry: I know.

Kiki: I hated you that day. You and your flip talk. That little girl lying dead.

Jerry: How do you think I felt when you told me not to be soft? [At Theresa’s funeral, Kiki tells Jerry not to give Theresa’s family any money because it would show he’s soft.]

Kiki: Oh, Jerry, I want you to be soft. You’re soft inside where it counts. I wanted it that day, too, but I didn’t dare tell you.

Jerry: Kiki, Galbraith said something to me, something that you ought to know. We were talking and he said that people were like that ball in the fountain at the hotel. [A small ball perpetually bounces on top of a stream of water that shoots up in the air.] That they get pushed around by things bigger than themselves. That’s the way it was with us, only we were too small to see it that way.

Kiki smiles at Jerry. They walk away, arm in arm, and the film ends.

In an earlier scene, Kiki confesses to Jerry that she has spent her life “pretending that nothing bothers” her. Then she says, “We’ve been so busy trying to be tough guys,” and Jerry kisses her.

Kiki continues, “Confession. I’m a complete softy. Oh, I’ve been conscience-stricken and worried sick ever since that leopard got loose.”

Jerry replies, “If that’s what it takes to make a softy, there’s two of us.”

Next they exchange lies to each other about why they’re out of money. Since the lies don’t make sense, Kiki and Jerry are forced to admit they are broke because they secretly gave away their money to the families of the dead young women.

After confessing how they really are – soft, not cynical or hardboiled – they are able to show that they love each other.

By dropping their pretense of being hard, they free themselves from behaving as cynical and uncaring people. If they didn’t break free by choice, they would go on being “pushed around by things bigger than themselves” (i.e., social conventions that frown upon softies).

What Kiki and Jerry show is that they’re not fated to live their lives behind a false front of toughness. By exerting their willpower to change the way they have lived, they not only make themselves a romantic couple, they make themselves a pair of amateur detectives. Their decision to cease being cynical and hardboiled results in their choice not to leave the town.

Before Kiki and Jerry admit that they are two softies, Jerry says, “All I want to do is go to Chicago.” As Kiki starts to tell Jerry that she wants to be different, she acknowledges, “All I cared about is myself. Myself and my two by four career.”

Immediately after they have their mutual confessional and their first kiss, they understand that they can’t catch a train for Chicago. Instead, they have to stay and “catch a murderer.” Kiki says, “I want this town to be safe and happy again.” Jerry says he doesn’t “know how to start being a detective. All I know is I want to do something about this.”

The Leopard Man explicitly takes to task the very noir attributes Elliot ascribes to it. But, as I see it, this rejection doesn’t weaken the film. Because Kiki and Jerry reject cynicism and fatalism, their efforts lead to the exposure and death of the murderer. Galbraith may have been damned, but he would not have been doomed – that is, he would have been able to continue killing innocent young women – unless Kiki and Jerry had rejected their hardboiled, selfish attitude toward others.

Addendum: Elliot Lavine on The Leopard Man (The Blackboard 12/14/2009)

The Leopard Man is generally thought of today primarily as a horror film, and it owes this slight miscalculation to the fact that it was the third film produced by Val Lewton as part of his series of low-budget horror films, preceded by Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943). All three of these influential B films were directed by Jacques Tourneur, a man known almost in equal measure for his dalliances into the world of horror (the aforementioned Lewton films and Curse of the Demon (1957)) as his contributions to the film noir cycle (Out of the Past (1947), Berlin Express (1948), Nightfall (1957), The Fearmakers (1958)).

But despite its presence in the Lewton horror canon,The Leopard Man (adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich) is film noir to its very core, carrying with it the customary load of unbridled cynicism and the fabled fatalism that typifies this film style. And although the events that unfold in the story are indeed horrific, its style and thematic content place it squarely at the center of the noir universe.

Set in an unnamed, studio-bound New Mexico city, The Leopard Man initially focuses on nightclub entertainer Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks) and her PR man Jerry Manning (Dennis O’Keefe). Anxious to help his client attract more attention, he has rented a trained leopard from a local Indian, Charlie How-Come (Abner Biberman) with the idea that Kiki lead the beast into the nightclub while the opening act and her chief competitor, a castanet-clicking dancer named Clo-Clo (Margo) performs her number. Having achieved the desired effect, Kiki calmly makes her way through the crowd with the leopard. Angered at being upstaged in such a fashion, Clo-Clo approaches the leopard and clicks her castanets boldly in his face, scaring him sufficiently into breaking free from its leash, bolting wildly through the club and out the door into the night.

Later, the police and the townsfolk gather outside in an attempt to find the leopard. Leaving the club, Clo-Clo mildly taunts Jerry for his failed efforts and begins her walk home. She passes a window where young Theresa Delgado (Margaret Landry) looks mournfully out onto the darkened street. She greets the young girl and moves out of the frame.

It’s suppertime and Theresa’s mother is insisting that the young girl venture out into the night to buy the flour needed to make the family’s dinner. Theresa pleads with her mother but she shoos her out of the house with a caustic admonition. Theresa makes her way through the menacing landscape until she reaches the store only to find it closed. Theresa must now travel across the arroyo to the larger supermarket to purchase the flour. Accomplishing this she now begins her frightening return home, accompanied by the strange and melancholy sounds of the night. Tourneur and Lewton build this entire sequence (as well as many others) without any music on the soundtrack, magnifying the intense tension generated by Tourneur’s inventive direction and cinematographer DeGrasse’s shadowy camerawork. The eerie silence is broken only by the unexpected roar of an overhead train that pins the wide-eyed Theresa to the wall as its rapidly flickering lights paint her frozen face as a fearful portrait of terror. But suddenly Theresa is now staring into the glowing eyes of the leopard, looming menacingly above. Engulfed by fear she frantically flees as the leopard springs after her in mad pursuit. Back at home her mother waits impatiently for her daughter’s return. The girl’s frenzied screams are now heard on the other side of the door. Panic grips Senora Delgado as she and her young son vainly struggle to open the heavily bolted door. Another terrified scream is heard followed by a loud, heavy thud as the snarling, devouring sounds of the leopard yield a slow, sickening trickle of blood from the narrow gap at the bottom of the door.

A slow dissolve, accented by the downward stroke of a window-washer’s squeegee reveals the interior of the funeral parlor where services for Theresa are taking place. Despite knowing that introducing the leopard has unleashed this tragedy, Jerry and Kiki are reassured by the sheriff that they are not truly responsible for Theresa’s death. Also present is Dr. Galbraith (James Bell), curator at the local museum. Galbraith concurs with the sheriff regarding Jerry and Kiki’s culpability, but when the sheriff asks Jerry to help out in tracking down the leopard, his glib refusal to do so only serves to paint him as a resolutely cynical and callously self-centered character in the eyes of the local townspeople.

Clo-Clo visits with a fortune-teller who continues to draw the death card in regards to the dancer’s future. But Clo-Clo wants to know what the cards before the death card reveal. “You will meet an elderly man and he will give you a great deal of money,” she says. Clo-Clo merely laughs in her face and leaves.

With customary stylistic flourish, Tourneur introduces a new set of characters as another scene with Clo-Clo concludes. She is imploring a street florist to give her a complimentary flower. He refuses, but his paying customer pulls a long-stem rose from her bouquet and flippantly tells the dancer, “my senorita, Consuelo Contreras, will hardly miss this” and places the flower in Clo-Clo’s hand. Tourneur’s fluid camera follows the woman back to a palatial home where, upstairs, the family and servants of beautiful Consuelo (Tula Parma) sweetly serenade her on this, her twenty-first birthday. Later in the day Consuelo and her mother idly pass the time together, but the lovely girl is eager to break away and meet her lover Raoul at their pre-arranged meeting place, the cemetery where Consuelo has promised to deliver flowers to her father’s grave. The mother senses her daughter’s youthful desires and reluctantly grants her permission to leave. Elated, Consuelo rushes off to the cemetery. The grounds keeper reminds her that the gates close exactly at six o’clock but Consuelo is too pre-occupied with her mission to pay careful heed to his words. Arriving upon the spot of their rendezvous she becomes fearful that Raoul has been there and left. Despondent over missing her lover, Consuelo wanders aimlessly around the cemetery while the sky overhead slowly darkens. The grounds keeper has sounded the closing bell but Consuelo hasn’t heard it and the gates are closed and locked. Trapped inside the cemetery, her concern quickly turns to panic when she realizes that she cannot leave. Outside the walls she hears a passing motorist and she lets out a blood-curdling scream. Attracting the attention of the unseen driver, he tells her that he’ll return with a ladder and rescue her. She hears his car pull away and her terror begins to mount, the darkness and the wind enveloping her in a shroud of fear. From above, a large tree branch bends heavily and snaps back and Consuelo’s terrified scream is all we hear as the screen fades to black.

The next morning the sheriff is certain the leopard has struck again. But despite what the evidence suggests, Jerry has his doubts. Charlie-How-Come doesn’t think his leopard is responsible either and the two of them visit Dr. Galbraith at the museum. After discussing the possibility that a man and not a leopard is responsible, Galbraith slyly asserts that a man who is familiar with the ways of a leopard could be behind the killings. But what kind of man would kill like this? One who possibly drinks to the point of no longer being able to remember the events of the night before, Galbraith suggests. Like Charlie-How-Come, who is known far and wide as a heavy drinker. Charlie is shaken by this and insists that the sheriff lock him up so that no more innocent young girls meet this horrible fate. The sheriff concurs and Charlie is locked up in a jail cell.

Later, Clo-Clo meets an older gentleman at the local cantina and, after sharing a couple of drinks together, he places a folded-up hundred-dollar bill in her palm. Rushing back to the fortune-teller, Clo-Clo recounts the events of that evening, confirming her earlier predictions. On her way home, Clo-Clo places the bill inside her stocking. Once home she realizes that the bill has fallen out and she rushes back into the night to retrieve the money. Spotting what she thinks is the bill she crosses the street and bends down only to find a scrap of paper. Rising, she lights a cigarette and turns, only to find herself staring directly into something dark and awful. Her cigarette falls to the ground, she covers her face and screams. Clo-Clo is now the third victim.

Jerry, now convinced that the leopard was not responsible for the second and third killings speaks again with Galbraith who concedes that, yes, there are men who are compelled to commit horrendous acts of criminal bestiality — he cites Bluebeard and Jack the Ripper as two such examples of human monsters. Charlie-How-Come, now exonerated, shows up hauling a sack that contains the remains of his leopard: it seems that it was shot dead at least a week before.

That night as Galbraith returns to the museum he is confronted with a raft of images and sounds connected to the killings: the clicking of castanets, a burning cigarette lying on the sidewalk. Then the sound of footsteps approaching. He looks up to find Kiki in front of him. Aware that his cover is blown Galbraith lunges toward her but she manages to squirm free as Jerry, joined by Consuelo’s grieving boyfriend Raoul enter the room. Galbraith makes a mad break and escapes into the night with the others behind him. Jerry and Raoul encounter a procession of hooded men with torches on a ritualistic march. There they find Galbraith and hustle him out into the open where he confesses everything, drifting into a grim reverie about his uncontrollable urge to murder. Raoul pulls out a gun and fires at Galbraith, killing him instantly.

The Leopard Man is a film of unrelenting sadness made by people who clearly understood the true meaning of Cornell Woolrich’s demented poetry. For these people are the damned, the doomed, and the eternally forlorn; the perpetual inhabitants of the world of noir.