(Mark Robson, 1943)
(essay by Troy)
I run to death and death meets me as fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday
Bookended with that verse by John Donne, the rushing urgency of impending death is firmly in place over the scant 71 minutes of Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson acquits himself fine as the director, but the true auteur here is Lewton). Proposed as Lewton’s shot at an A-picture, his insistence on keeping Robson on as director relegated it back to the ranks of B-movie and with that status came the shortened duration. Perhaps that’s for the best, as the terse nature of what follows creates a palpable sensation that our time in life is short, each second bringing us one step closer to death.
The plot itself isn’t served terribly well by the short runtime, with subplots and character interactions that seem to start and resolve without warning. The crux of the story concerns Mary, fresh out of boarding school, who is searching for her missing sister, Jacqueline. In the process she meets up with three men who each hold a piece to the puzzle. We find out that Jacqueline was part of a cult of high-society devil worshippers called The Palladists. She has chosen to leave them and, as a result, they deem she must die. In an odd twist, however, this happens to be a pacifist group of Satanists and thus, they can inflict no harm on Jacqueline and must instead attempt to coerce her into committing suicide.
I won’t go into anymore detail than that, as the plot becomes a tad convoluted. Besides, the narrative is more of interest when viewed as a catalyst for Lewton and Robson to create a number of memorable scenes, full of noir-ish atmospherics. This begins with the aforementioned discovery of Jacqueline’s room, whereupon the door opens and Robson’s camera focuses singularly on a chair before panning up to reveal the noose. Later, Mary and a private eye break into a cosmetics factory to explore a mysterious room. It’s a fantastic sequence, full of ominous shadows and inky black, foreboding corridors, a clock ticking incessantly in the background to heighten the tension. Then there’s the eerie scene where one of the cult leaders intrudes on Mary privacy while she is taking a shower. We hear the voice of the person, but we don’t see her face — just her imposing shadow through the shower curtain (ala Psycho, which is still 17-years from being made, if you need a visual hint) giving sinister threats to Mary.
It all leads to an amazing finale, a protracted sequence where all roads lead to the same conclusion for poor Jacqueline. The Palladists attempt to berate her into ending her life by placing a glass of poison in front of her and imploring her to drink it. She sits there with it in front of her, contemplating the idea for some time, before finally attempting to take a drink. Before she can drink, the cup is flung from her hands by her friend (or lesbian lover, if one looks at the subtext). The Palladists, knowing they aren’t able to inflict harm on her, let her go, leading to her wandering through the streets in a bizarre and noir-tinged journey, paranoia seeming to overtake her, creeping along in the shadows as she is eventually menaced by a man wielding a knife (who I didn’t notice as being a Palladist — am I wrong in that?). She escapes, and heads back to see Mary, perhaps for help. On her way to do so, though, her dying neighbor Mimi walks out and the two have a conversation. Mimi becomes emboldened to enjoy what life she has left, while Jacqueline sure of the fact that she is going to die, one way or the other, decides there is no reason to wait. The shocking final shot is of Mimi leaving to enjoy the life she has left, while we hear the sound of a chair falling to the floor from Jacqueline’s room. As harrowing and downbeat of an ending as you will see in the 1940′s.
Portents of death are seen throughout the film, not just in the noose that, ahem, hangs over each moment, but in the repeated motif of clocks, that constant reminder of time sifting away. It’s made readily apparent in the scene in the cosmetic factory, the ticking of the clock overwhelming the soundtrack. But it’s also there visually in the first scene with Mary (she stares at it as she leaves the boarding school) and then in the final scene with Jacqueline (she stares at while leaving the Palladists meeting place). Both ponder death in those moments, each choose a different path.
Lewton is interested in the tangible dread that the inevitability of death represents and he uses the characters to provide varying angles into how we choose to deal with and accept the fact that we will all one day die. Jacqueline is obsessed with the matter –she has "always wanted to die" and keeps a room with a noose hung from the ceiling because she felt that life "wasn’t worth living unless one could end it." Mimi is dying of tuberculosis, bedridden and knowing she has limited time left. Yet, where Jacqueline has everything to live for and wants to die, Mimi is assured of her impending death and wants nothing more than to live.
Beyond these two there’s Mary, who throughout the film makes clear by her (in)actions that she moves between a state of naiveté and a state of fear over the concept of death. She fails to grasp her sister’s macabre fascination with the subject and is shown to be weary of exploring what lies in the darkness (see again that scene at the cosmetic factory). It’s no mistake that at the beginning of the film, one of her teacher’s implores to her that "one must have courage to really live in the world." It’s a lesson Mary finds out as she exits the safeness of her old life and enters into the "real" world that Jacqueline inhabits.
I feel that I’m only scratching the surface of these themes here and perhaps even misinterpreting some of the characters’ motives, as if somehow I’m not getting at everything Lewton is trying to get across (please add your thoughts in the comments). Regardless, I am confident in saying that Lewton successfully explores many of these dark thoughts here — the fear, fascination, and potential attraction of death, as well as the sinking feeling that it can lie around around every corner, in every room, on every dark street, and down every corridor.
(See more screencaps at Troy’s blog, here)
(this film appeared on Troy’s list at #15 and Jamie’s at #18)
Hi! Troy…
What a very well-written and very detailed review of a film that I have watched a few times and featured it twice on “me” blog.
Thanks, for sharing!
[Postscript: Sam Juliano, has linked back to Tony's review which is the review of The Seventh Victim that I featured on "me" blog.]
DeeDee
Here goes the final scene…to Robson’ “The Seventh Victim.”
Utterly fabulous addition here Dee Dee (and an unforgettable scene!)
That’s just an amazing scene, isn’t it. Thanks for posting that DeeDee.
Ahh yes the Noir Queen comes through again…… I may pop this on my DVD tonight and watch it for the fifth or sixth time.
A good effort to deal with a film the complexity of which belies its brief 71 minutes.
After Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), and Leopard Man (1943), Lewton as head of the low-budget horror production unit at RKO, could not afford the services of Jacques Tourneur, who had been promoted by RKO to a-production, and he gave Mark Robson, who had edited those earlier movies, hist first directing job with The Seventh Victim, which was always scheduled as a b. Ironically The Seventh Victim out-classes Lewton’s earlier RKO productions.
As for Jacqueline, I fear you have grasped the wrong end of the stick. She is not comfortable with life: “I’ve always wanted to die – always.” Life nauseates her and in her desperation joins the Satanic cult, and only when she re-cants and seeks to abandon the group, is she marked for death. But she wants death on her terms, not theirs. She is the classic existential protagonist: “I can’t say I feel relieved or satisfied; just the opposite, I am crushed. Only my goal is reached: I know what I wanted to know; I have understood all that has happened to me… The Nausea has not left me and I don’t believe it will leave me so soon; but I no longer have to bear it, it is no longer an illness or a passing fit: it is I. – Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938).
Although I will enter my own comment later, and am close to leaving the house for school I just want to acknowledge this tremendous comment from Tony, whose long appreciation of Val Lewton’s cinema has manifested itself in many superlative posts at FilmsNoir.net. I am thrilled at his contributions here and offer up his own review of September 27, 2008 complete with a slideshow:
http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/the-seventh-victim-1943-and-all-my-pleasures-are-like-yesterdays.html
It’s one of his very best.
Thanks for the comment here Tony.
On the first point about the film’s A-movie/B-movie roots — I read somewhere the story I relayed in the first paragraph, though I can’t remember the source. Perhaps it’s incorrect then?
As to the second point — yeah, you hit the nail on the head there and that’s what I felt I was missing when I was writing this. Plus, your reading still provides for the neat doubling between Jacqueline and Mimi and Jacqueline and Mary, as well.
(Can I blame my somewhat hurried writing of this for missing that!)
Although both THE BODY SNATCHER and CAT PEOPLE are formidable efforts, there are actually two Lewton masterworks: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (visually the more eloquent and elegent) and THE SEVENTH VICTIM (the more poetic and profound) Joel E. Siegel opines: “Neither film employs a conventional narrative structure although the subjects, voodoo and devil worship, are the stuff of traditional horror movies.” For both these films, Lewton devised a fragmented, mosaic-like structure, a series of tiny, precise vignettes which do not so much tell the story as sketch in its borders and possibilities. This technique, in some ways similar to the way in which Bresson ‘tells’ AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, transcends conventional narrative by establishing a number of tensions and possibilities which the audience must connect and interpret for himself.
In all of Lewton’s best films he treats the same theme – the conflict of the powers of reason struggling against the powers of the unknown. THE SEVENTH VICTIM is Lewton’s most personal and radical production; the film which, more than any other, reveals the man. (it is known that after a screening of the film for family members decades ago that the group ‘felt him in the room.’) It was his first without Tourneur, which may explain why much of the screenplay draws upon the personal. THE SEVENTH VICTIM is less orthodox in its methods than I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and lacks particular visual distinction. It is Lewton’s (rather than director Mark Robson’s) film: a cold, fragmented, disturbingly poetic amplification of the Donne epigraph (provided at the outset of this review by Troy Olson) from the First Holy Sonnet, “I run to Death and Death meets me fast, and all my pleasures are like yesterday.’ In all his best work, one finds Lewton embracing dark, negating forces – suicide, diabolism, witchcraft. The film is uncompromisingly annihilatory and unusually fecund in its vision of life as a meaningless, pitiful process of consumption.
Wow Sam your comment here is amazing. You and Tony really bring it with your articulate responses. I tip my hat to both of you.
Wow — fantastic comment here, Sam. As you point out, this film definitely captures Lewton’s predilection for the dark subjects of the world (I like the anecdote about family members feeling him in the room after the viewing).
Nice work Sam!
Great essay, Troy. I love this film, and what makes it so special is that it’s a horror film where the horror is almost purely metaphysical and philosophical. The horror arises, not so much directly from the cult, but from the idea they advance, the idea of embracing death. The horror is in the way a person can become obsessed with death, can lose their grip on life, how easy it is to just let go and give up. The plot is mostly nonsensical, but the atmosphere is absolutely enthralling, with this sense of dread hanging over everything from the very first moments.
“The horror is in the way a person can become obsessed with death, can lose their grip on life, how easy it is to just let go and give up.”
That line just about sums it up perfectly, Ed. There is something shocking and frightening about that ending, where we assume as a viewer (this being a 1943 film, after all) that Jacqueline WILL find something worth living for or that Mimi’s speech WILL give her an impetus towards valuing life. And yet, suddenly, Jacqueline chooses to “just let go and give up” in the wrenching and horrific final moment.
Great comments guys (and girls), and great essay.
I also love this film, and it seems every time I watch it it rises in my opinions (I’ve seen it twice now), I think it’s head and shoulders above all the other Lewton’s (which says a lot as they are all so good). I really would have had no problem seeing this film at #1.
The last time I watched this film, I happened to be reading Osamu Dazai’s ‘No Longer Human’ for a second time. As great as Tony’s connection to Sartre is above, that seems like the book to connect this one to, at least to me.
_ _ _ _ _
Also of interest to Jonathan Rosenbaum fans, of his ’100 favorite/best films’ list, this was the only Horror film to make the list.
Well I have stated a few times that The Seventh Victim is my favorite Lewton film. It is as much film noir as it is horror. A very complex film that has no clear absolute meaning. It seems to be saying many things to many people. The whole “satanists in the city” idea seems to have clearly inspired Polanski in Rosemary’s Baby. The man who follows Jacqueline through the streets is definitely a Palladist. If I remember correctly he is in the room while Jacqueline is being coerced and is silently ordered to leave the premise (probably to wait for her if she departs alive). This changes the whole idea that the satanists are pacifists. If pushed into a corner they will react violently and kill if necessary. The cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca is breathtaking and perfectly aligned with noir. I also love the fact that The Seventh Victim is tied to the Cat People by the fact that Dr Judd appears in both movies. When he tells Jason of the girl that went mad he seems to be alluding to Irena. This would mean that he lived through his ordeal with the metaphorical panther and is alive to tell about it. He might be referring to someone else which would then make The Seventh Victim a prequel to that earlier film where Dr Judd is killed. Either way it’s a sly little nod to past Lewton. I have the sneaking suspicion that when a film noir countdown materializes on this blog that The Seventh Victim will resurface to greet us again……
“I also love the fact that The Seventh Victim is tied to the Cat People by the fact that Dr Judd appears in both movies.”
Yes, isn’t this a prequel (or is it sequel) to CAT PEOPLE? I recall reading that somewhere, which is pretty interesting.
Jamie the great thing is that it isn’t clear. I tend to believe that Dr. Judd lived and Irena is the woman he speaks about to Jason. This would make that scene more moving and give it greater meaning. I think that was Lewton’s intention and why it was included. I agree with everyone else that Val was the key auteur in this film above even his director.
I didn’t have room to mention that connection, but it’s a great metatextual tidbit that Lewton seems to throw in. I too like the tie in to Irena that Maurizio mentions — it fits so well, it can’t be an accident, can it?
There’s also the fact that he is villainous in CAT PEOPLE, whereas here he is sort of the moral center — perhaps Lewton simply wanted a chance to redeem the character for some odd reason?
Maurizio, yes the noir connection is very strong.
In his book, Film Noir (2002), Andrew Spicer references J.P.Telotte’s study of Lewton, ‘Dreams of Darkness: Fantasy and the Films of Val Lewton’ (1985): “As Telotte argues, Lewton’s films question the nature of perception and expose the fictiveness of rationality and the process of reason, emphasizing the dreamlike qualities of experience, the power of myths and psychic fantasies and the constant threat of meaninglessness.” Spicer concludes “In both subject matter and style they helped generate film noir.”
Lots I didn’t have room to include in my write-up, but one thing I wanted to point out is the ending scene with Jason and Dr. Judd, where they absolutely shames the evil Satanists with a verse from The Lord’s Prayer. Man, I bet they didn’t see THAT brilliant bon mot coming! It’s so absolutely over-the-top goofy that I can’t help but think it’s a feint by Lewton to throw the censors off the suicide trail. It still gets a chuckle from me every time.
Yeah that scene seems to be included so the censors could rest easy Troy. I always pretend the satanists don’t become unglued and instead close my eyes and imagine them unmoved. At least quote a line of scripture that isn’t so generic and might actually get some reaction. That bland overused bit Lewton throws out there is almost mocking in it’s lack of profundity to the matter at hand……
Yep, the mundane nature of the verse, something a 5-year old learns in Sunday School, used feels so beneath Lewton and his typical poetic/literate style. It shows how much faith we have in Lewton that we can assume there must have been a good reason that line is included.