Lewton, Val

Val Luton (birth name - Vladimir Gofshneider) was born in Yalta , Russian Empire , on May 7, 1904 into a Jewish family ^[3] . His mother, Anna Yakovlevna Hoffschneider-Leventon (emigrated by Nina Leventon and Lewton; December 10, 1874, Chisinau - February 26, 1967, Los Angeles) ^[4] , the elder sister of the actress Alla Nazimova , edited the monthly Jewish magazine in Yalta in 1905-1906 studying youth “Young Judea”, in which the beginning poet S. Ya. Marshak made his debut ^[5] ; married the merchant Markus Isaevich Hoffschneider ^[6] , but this marriage was short-lived ^{[7] [8] [9]} .

In 1906, his mother, leaving her husband, moved with her son and daughter Olga ^[10] to Berlin (where her brother Vladimir Leventon lived), and in 1909 - to the USA (where her sister lived) ^{[11] [12]} . In the United States, they settled in New York with the younger sister of Nina, the famous American theater (and subsequently Hollywood) actress Alla Nazimova (née Leventon), who left for America in 1906 and by then had already achieved great success on Broadway ^[3] .

In 1920, the 16-year-old Lewton was "fired as a reporter for the newspaper Darien-Stamford Review" after it turned out that the article he wrote about a batch of kosher chickens dying from the New York heat turned out to be fiction " ^[3] . Having changed his name, Val Lewton (Wladimir Ivan Lewton) studied at Columbia University for some time, and then worked as a journalist ^[3] . Lewton wrote for newspapers and magazines, and also began to write fiction, often using pseudonyms to hide his authorship ^[12] .

Even before he started making films, “Lewton became a fully-fledged writer, writing a total of 10 novels, six documentaries, a book of poems, and even the pornographic book“ Yasmin “(or“ Grushenskaya “)” ^{[2] [3]} .

In 1932, Newton wrote the best-selling novel, Not Her Bed, telling the story of an unemployed young woman in New York at the height of the Great Depression in 1931. The protagonist of the novel, “an office stenographer dismissed from work, goes from a respectable (albeit somewhere irresponsible) position to the lowest depths, doing all that is possible to survive, including prostitution” ^[3] . In 1936, under the pseudonym Cosmo Forbes, he published the novel “Where the Cobra Sings” ^[13] .

“Thanks to Nazimova , Lewton eventually found his way to Hollywood . His mother, with the help of her sister, was recruited to the history department of the New York office of the Metro studio (later renamed the Metro-Goldwin-Mayer), and in 1928 she hired Val to work in the advertising department of this studio (later Nina Lewton headed the New York office of the history department and was involved in translations from German). By this time he had already published two novels ” ^[3] . Lewton wrote promotional texts, as well as novelties of popular films for publication in magazines, which sometimes came together in a single book and published.

In 1932, after the success of his novel “Not Her Bed,” Lewton quit Metro to focus on literary activity, but the three subsequent novels that were published that same year were not able to repeat his success. When “producer David O. Selznik turned to Lewton’s mother with a request to find a screenwriter for him on a planned film based on Nikolai Gogol ’s novel“ Taras Bulba ”(never set up), she offered her own son, one of whose novels was literary trash on the Russian theme under the name "Cossack Checker" ” ^[3] . Although the film “Taras Bulba” was never staged, in 1933 “Lewton got a permanent job with Selznik, where he worked for eight years as a script editor and jack of all trades” ^[12] , including the copyright agent rights and mediator in relations with Hollywood censorship authorities.

Lewton first became known in the cinema as one of the directors of the revolutionary scenes in the Bastille in a historical drama based on the novel by Charles Dickens, The History of Two Cities (1935). He also came up with the famous camera crane shot for Gone With the Wind (1939), where Scarlett walks through endless rows of dead and wounded Confederate soldiers ^{[2] [13] [14]} . He also worked on Selznik's films “A Star Was Born ” (1937) and “ Rebecca ” (1940) ^[3] .

In 1942, Lewton went on to work for RKO Radio Pictures , “a virtually bankrupt company after the financial failure of Orson Welles ’s masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941) and Magnificent Ambersons (1942)” ^[3] . Lewton was taken as “the producer of a series of low-budget horror films , and everything he did in this position became history” ^[3] . Lewton was taken with three conditions: the budget of each of his films should not exceed 150 thousand dollars, the duration of each film should not exceed 75 minutes, and the names of the films would be given by the studio management itself. As a result, Lewton became the producer of "many famous and highly regarded category B films, which were characterized by low costs and great profitability" ^[12] .

Features of Lewton's production work at RKO

As a producer of RKO, Lewton began to specialize in "low-budget, but extremely effective horror stories, speaking simultaneously as a co-author of the scripts of some of them" ^[14] . Lewton often offered his own stories and “hired the authors who wrote them, but he himself always wrote the final version” ^[13] . He “prepared the scripts so accurately that it was clear what exactly he wanted to get from his directors”, that is, “practically himself” created his films ^[14] . However, he never indicated his name in the credits as a screenwriter, with the exception of two cases - “ Body Thieves ” and “ Bedlam ” - when he used the pseudonym Carlos Keith, with whom he had previously signed his novel “Where the Cobra Sings”.

Newton was not happy with the idea of ​​“just making quick and easy horror movies. He created a school of poetic film art with the motto “less is more”, within which shock effects were replaced by shadows and sounds, and what was not visible often frightened no less than what was shown ” ^[15] . Lewton created the feeling of "the horror of what was happening, using black and white shooting, shadows and the power of hints - he never showed everything that was happening - the viewer only heard or saw reflections on the walls or in the water." This formula inspired the viewer with the illusion that he was “wandering along the street, where the light is always scattered, black is never completely black, and the impermeability forces you to constantly strain to see something more clearly. The effect is as if you are looking into the keyhole and in shock you feel a cold finger on your neck ” ^[3] . “His films enchant the viewer, invite him into the world of dreams and subdue him, passing them into the hands of a crafty hypnotist” ^[3] . Sophisticated and clever scary paintings by Lewton “found hot support from the influential critic James Agee , who in the 1940s praised Lewton's work in his film reviews in Time and National magazines” ^[3] .

Lewton Films at RKO Studio

In just a three-year period in the 1940s, producer Val Luton produced some of the most influential and clever psychological horror films in history. He brought depth to the category B movie, influencing countless independent-minded Hollywood filmmakers in the following years. The first and probably the best work of Lewton was the horror film “ Cat People ” (1942). ” ^[16] . Based on the script by DeWitt Bodin, written with the assistance of Turner and Lewton, the film tells about a girl living in New York from ancient Serbian people, the representatives of which can be transformed into wild cats during strong emotional excitement. "it was a film Lewton, and he controlled it in almost everything. Its main feature, as well as most subsequent Lewton films is the lack of a standard worry Chudova a. "Prior Ljuton horror film built around a monstrous beast created with techniques and makeup. However Ljuton decided that" terrible will form around the characters indistinct and disturbing psychological atmosphere. The psycho-sexual complexes main character become a perfect example of his creative method " ^{[ 16.]} Created for just 134 thousand dollars, the film brought in almost 4 million dollars, and was the highest grossing film of the Russian currency market that year. “Cat People” “saved the Russian currency, and for some time Lewton became the hero of the studio” ^[3] . In 1993, this film was recognized as having great cultural significance and transferred to the preservation of the US National Film Registry ^[17] .

After this success, Lewton was given the opportunity to make films with minimal intervention from the studio, which allowed him to realize his vision, focusing on ominous hints and topics of existential ambiguity. The second horror film Lewton and Turner “ I walked with a zombie ” (1943) spoke about a Canadian nurse who arrives on the Caribbean island of San Sebastian to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner. She is faced with the mysterious state of her patient, who is either mentally ill, or bewitched by a mysterious cult, or turned into a zombie . However, this is not a zombie film, as it places a significant emphasis on deeply reflecting Caribbean culture and voodoo beliefs. Like its predecessor , Cat People , it relies “not so much on special effects as on gloomy psychological nightmares, using purely cinematic means to build suspense by creating an appropriate atmosphere. In these two films, Jacques Turner showed himself to be the master who is best able to bring Lewton’s vision to the screen ... Although “Cat People” is valued more than any other Lewton film, “ Zombies ” produces an equally hypnotic effect. Recalling the story of Jane Eyre with the addition of Voodoo elements, the film has a strikingly rich associative visual style ” ^[18] .

The third joint work of Lewton and Turner , the horror film " The Leopard Man " (1943) was based on the book " Black Alibi " (1942) by American criminal writer Cornell Woolrich . Its action takes place in a small town in the state of New Mexico , where a panther escapes from a cage, after which mutilated human corpses appear in the district. However, the seemingly obvious answer to the question about the killer is not so simple. “Although Leopard does not reach the level of the previous two films, it is nevertheless an exciting and fascinating psychological thriller with eerie shadows and shades of gray and black, which can be amazingly ferocious” ^[19] .

After the success of these paintings, the director Turner went on to raise, and began to put films of category A, and Lewton made the directors of his films the young employees of the RKO studio - Robert Wise and Mark Robson . “Both had experience working with Wells : in the films Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Amberson , Wise worked as an editor , and Robson was an assistant director. In the film Cat People , Robson, in turn, was an editor, after which he directed five Lewton films. Wise directed three paintings by Lewton, and later created such classic films as “The Day the Earth Stopped ” (1951), “ Betting for Tomorrow ” (1959), “ West Side Story ” (1961) and “ Sounds of Music ” (1965) ^[3] .

The first experience of cooperation between Lewton and Robson was the “creepy, sinister film“ The Seventh Victim ”(1943)” ^[3] , in which a young naive girl comes to New York in search of her missing sister, gradually getting involved in the strange other world of the satanic sect . This "stylish film", which was distinguished by a "dark noir atmosphere with deep black and white shades", "anticipated modern horror with homegrown witches and manifestations of domestic evil ... such as" Rosemary's Baby "(1968) with his Manhattan witchwork" ^{[20 ]} .

Robson's psychological horror The Ghost Ship (1943) tells of a merchant navy officer who begins to fear for the safety of crew members, suspecting that the captain of his ship is going crazy. However, the rest of the team believes that the cause is the cast and damnation of the ship, after which a series of mysterious deaths occur on board. “Perhaps one of the best films directed by Mark Robson , The Ghost Ship , was considered lost for decades, and one of the least known and most mysterious of all the Newton thrillers for RKO ” ^[21] . The film successfully began theater production on Christmas Eve 1943. However, "despite the fact that it is based on the original script, in February 1944, two playwrights brought an action against the studio on charges of plagiarism, after which the film disappeared from theaters" ^[21] . Only in the late 1990s, when " Turner Entertainment acquired the RKO library, were the rights to rent a movie in cinemas, on television and video restored" ^[21] .

Robson's next film, the drama Unbelted Youth (1944), spoke about the rise in youth crime in a small American town during World War II , and how a veteran who returned from the war was able to take control of the situation. This picture is considered one of the worst in the filmography of Lewton ^[22] .

The movie “ The Curse of Cat People ” (1944), staged by Robert Wise, “officially was a sequel to the classic of the psychological horror Val Lewton's“ Cat People “(1942), but in reality was a fascinating and charming fantasy told on behalf of the child.” The film tells the story of a 6-year-old girl, the daughter of the protagonist from the movie " Cat People ", which establishes a friendship with a female cat (who died in the finals of the first film), who is her visions. “Burdened with an ominous title, producer Lewton and screenwriter DeWitt Bodin decided to offer a charming look at the wonderfully limitless realm of children's imagination, and in this capacity the film achieves unconditional success” ^[23] .

“In October 1943, Lewton hoped to strengthen his reputation by stepping out of the horror movie genre, and suggested that the studio make a historical drama based on the stories of Guy de Maupassant ” ^[24] called “ Mademoiselle Fifi ” (1944). The film takes place in an occupied French village during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, where, in order to calm the atrocities of the cruel Prussian governor, the French send him a charming laundress. “Although the film was beautifully staged by Robert Wise , it failed because of its pretentiousness, not to mention the uneven acting” ^[25] . “During the previews, the audience reacted negatively to the final of the film, which looked like a defeat from Prussia. The film showed itself poorly at the box office, having lost more money than any of the previous films of Newton ” ^[24] .

The next work of Robert Wise , the horror film The Body Thief (1945) was based on the eponymous short story by Robert Lewis Stevenson . Although Lewton participated in the scripting of almost all of his films, this time he first became the official co-author of the script under the pseudonym Carlos Keith. The picture takes place in Edinburgh in 1831, where a medical scientist hires a cab driver to illegally supply him with fresh corpses from a cemetery in order to conduct scientific experiments. After a while, the driver simply begins to kill people and by means of blackmail forces the surgeon to buy their corpses, which leads to a tragic denouement. “The film had a modest budget, like many other RKO films of the 1940s, but Lewton and Wise were able to create a frightening atmosphere, greatly enhancing the story. The film seemed even too strong to British censors, which delayed its release on British screens for more than 50 years ... Boris Karloff played one of his best and most sinister roles in this film, in addition, "it was the last" serious "horror film with Lugosi’s participation, his subsequent works were mainly associated with parodies ” ^[26] .

In 1945-46, Boris Karloff played in a total of three films of the RKO studio, produced by Lewton - Isle of the Dead , Body Thief and Bedlam . In a 1946 interview with Louis Berg of the Los Angeles Times , Karloff thanked Lewton for saving him from an overly long series of films about Frankenstein at Universal . Berg writes: “Mr. Karloff loves and respects Mr. Newton as a person who saved him from the eternal image of the living dead and revived, so to speak, his soul” ^[27] .

The film by Mark Robson “ Island of the Dead ” (1945) was created under the influence of the painting of the same name by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin . During the Balkan War of 1912, a series of mysterious killings, allegedly committed by the legendary ancient witch, take place on one of the Greek islands , where quarantine was established in connection with the plague epidemic. “The film, which did not pay much attention during the first appearance on the screen, only won over time, and still looks like a really frightening suspense thriller, and the final scene today is amazing as it was when the picture was created” ^{[ 28]} .

The drama " Bedlam " (1946) takes place in the 18th century around the eponymous psychiatric hospital in London and is inspired by a series of engravings by the English artist William Hogarth . Seeing how terribly the patients are treated there, the mistress of one of the influential officials decides to reform the work of the hospital, but in the end she herself appears in it as a patient. The lady sets up a riot, which ends up with patients waking up the hospital manager in a building wall alive. “This far from the best film of Newton, which has a number of shortcomings, serves as a fascinating example of how genre filmmakers try to work within the framework of the genre and at the same time break beyond genre boundaries. The biggest problem with Bedlam is that the picture seeks to be a horror film and at the same time a serious sociological treatise, and is simply not able to satisfy the requirements of both genres ... But still, this is a very attractive film with two star acting roles ... The production work also deserves attention, and the production of Mark Robson is full of imagination. And if the film is not able to reconcile horror in the sociological aspects of the script, the director still does an excellent job with his work, playing on the strengths of both ” ^[29] . In the future, Lewton hoped to switch to category A films, but Bedlam (1946), having "a larger budget than his previous work, could not earn as much money as he had expected. As a result, Lewton was instructed to continue working with films of a smaller scale ” ^[14] .

In 1946, the head of RCO Charles Corner , who constantly supported Lewton, died, after which a shake-up of workers and management began at the studio, as a result of which Lewton was left without a job after a heart attack. Growing health problems, financial problems of Hollywood and some other problems led to the fact that after that, and until his death in 1951, Lewton made as a producer only three films " ^[12] .

After leaving RKO, Lewton tried to continue producing films in other places, but "none of his subsequent paintings had the style and appeal of his low-scale, atmospheric horror films" ^[14] . While Lewton was engaged in the horror genre, he was successful, but "his production work in other genres could not reach the level of expectations of the studios" ^[3] .

First, Lewton reworked a previously unused scenario based on the life of Lucretia Borgia . Actress Paulette Goddard from Paramount Studios liked him, and in exchange for the script, Lewton got a job in the studio until July 1948 (Lewton’s seriously rewritten script laid the foundation for the film “ The Bride of Vengeance ” with Goddard in the title role, which was released in 1949 ) Working for Paramount , Lewton became the producer of the film My Personal True Love (1948), directed by Compton Bennett. Lewton’s first (and last) project at the new studio turned out to be “completely uncharacteristic of sentimental work,” in the center of which is a love triangle from a former prisoner of war, a middle-aged man and his son who returned from the war. “This film is the best proof that romantic romance was not Val Lewton's strength.” ^[30]

In 1950, after a ten-year break, Lewton returned to the Metro-Goldwin-Mayer studio, where he was forced to finally “abandon his work in the psychological thriller genre of his days on RKO ”. Directed by Norman Taurog, the movie Please Believe Me was "a simple, sometimes oversimplified romantic comedy, created primarily to showcase Deborah Kerr's talents. She plays an English girl who inherits a rich ranch in Texas , after which three begin to look after her bachelor. “As it turned out,“ Please Believe Me “became Newton’s swan song in the cinema, he died shortly after the film was released” ^[31] .

After this film, Lewton once again changed the genre and began writing the script for the film about the famous siege of Fort Ticonderoga during the American War of Independence in 1777. Universal studio made him an offer on this work, and although the script was never used, Lewton received the position of producer of the Apache Drums Western , which was released in 1951. The action of the film directed by Hugo Fregonese takes place in the Wild West , a newly built group of enthusiastic settlers, where the threat of an imminent attack by the Apache tribe allows the personalities of the main characters to reveal themselves in a new way ^[32] . This film is usually regarded as the closest to the early Newton horror films for the RKO studio.

Hollywood producer Stanley Kramer offered Lewton a job as an assistant producer for a series of films at Columbia Studios. Lewton quit with Universal and began preparing to work on the film My Six Beliefs (1952), but in 1951, after another heart attack, he died in Los Angeles at the age of 46. ^[14]

• Sister - Olga Gofshneider, later Lucy Olga Lewton (June 23, 1900 - June 10, 2000), left a book of memoirs “Alla Nazimova, my aunt; a personal memoir ”(1988) ^{[33] [34]} .
• Wife (since 1928) - Ruth Knepp Lewton ( Ruth Knapp Lewton , 1906-1994).
  • Son - Val Edwin Lewton ( Val Edwin Lewton , 1937-2015), artist and designer-gallery owner ^{[35] [36]} .
  • Daughter - Nina Lewton Druckman ( Nina Lewton Druckman , 1930-1978) ^{[37] [38]} .
• Uncle - Vladimir Yakovlevich Leventon ( December 18, 1872 , Chisinau - 1939 , USA ), lawyer, publicist on economic issues, employee of the newspaper "Russian Thought" (1907), Berlin correspondent for "Morning of Russia" and "Day" (pseudonym V. Nazimov ) ^[39] .
• Aunt - Alla Nazimova (real name - Marem-Ides (Adelaide Yakovlevna) Leventon; May 21 ( June 2 ) 1879 - July 13, 1945 ) - American film and theater actress, producer and screenwriter.

Producer

• 1942 - Cat People
• 1943 - I walked with a zombie
• 1943 - The Leopard Man
• 1943 - The Seventh Victim
• 1943 - The Ghost Ship
• 1944 - The Curse of the Cat People
• 1944 - Youth Runs Wild
• 1944 - Mademoiselle Fifi / Mademoiselle Fifi
• 1945 - The Body Snatcher
• 1945 - Isle of the Dead
• 1946 - Bedlam
• 1949 - My Own True Love
• 1950 - Please Believe Me / Please Believe Me
• 1951 - Apache Drums

Screenwriter

• 1945 - The Body Snatcher
• 1945 - Isle of the Dead (uncredited)
• 1946 - Bedlam

• Val Lewton at IMDB
• Val Lewton at Allmovie
• Val Lewton at Turner Classic Movies