Ready furr their close-up: How cats became catnip to cinema

Euronews

2 days ago

The most unbelievable thing about 2024's A Quiet Place: Day One was not its premise of world-invading ultrasonic-hearing aliens, but rather that a cat in such a situation wouldn't have everyone within its vicinity immediately killed by tapping a delicately balanced glass off a table.
Cats are - and I say this with nothing but love and admiration - really dumb.
It's why the internet loves videos of them so much. A feline flying through the air at the sight of a pea? They're more hilarious idiots than the evil genius Blofeld's cat would have us believe.
But what if all this time we've been wrong to pigeonhole them to silly clips involving keyboards and cucumbers? Indeed, recent years have seen a notable rise in cats taking on starring roles in critically lauded films and TV, suggesting that traditional purr-ceptions are changing - and Hollywood dog bias is dead.
Everybody wants to cast a cat
From the adventurous kitty in Gints Zilbalodis's award-decorated animation Flow, to Lucio the Maine Coon in Steven Zaillian's Ripley, on-screen cats have totally been having a meow-ment. More importantly, these are felines playing heroes or complex side characters, no longer typecast to villainous sidekicks or horror movie jump scares.
For filmmaker Eva Victor, whose upcoming movie Sorry, Baby follows a young professor. healing from trauma, the power of casting cats is their ability to reflect subtle human emotions through their body language.
"Cats are insane. They're everything. It's because you don't talk to them, but they know exactly how you are feeling, and you know how they are feeling, and there's a telepathy that over time you build with a cat," Victor said in an interview with Punch Drunk Ciritcs.
"They have very human-like needs and moods, and changes," Victor added, also reassuring audiences that Olga (the cat in her movie) does not die. "Like y'all. I would never do that to us. You have to believe me. The cat survives.'
Warning/slight spoiler: The same can't be guaranteed for poor little Junkman in this year's Bring Her Back.
Last year, the Quiet Place prequel revealed breakout performance(s) from two tuxedo cats named Nico and Schnitzel, who together play Frodo, the emotional support animal to terminally ill Samira (Lupita Nyong'o).
In typically dog-like fashion, Frodo is fiercely loyal to Samira. He sometimes runs off when there are loud noises, but always returns. He helps chance companion, Eric (Joseph Quinn), find her medication, and manages to turn on our tear ducts with every lingering look - did you know cats actually have 276 distinct feline facial expressions? Daniel Day Lewis could never.
And ok, while the cats' performances are no Messi-the-dog-in-Anatomy of a Fall, they do appear to do their own stunts (even getting wet at one point) and won over the hearts of cinemagoers the world over.
The risk of cat-astrophe
While in many ways it's a genius move to cast a cute cat in a leading role - and quite possibly the answer to all box office woes - it can still be a major gamble.
Cats are famously tough to work with due to their aloof personas and penchant for doing the exact opposite of what's asked of them out of seemingly sheer spiteful satisfaction.
Ray Berwick, who was responsible for training dozens of cats for the 1969 film Eye of the Cat, once admitted this was more difficult than his work with the flock of feathered fiends in Hitchcock's The Birds, while in 2019, 'Game of Thrones' show runners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss 'killed off' a ginger tabby called Ser Pounce due, in part, to it being such a diva on set.
'Dogs generally do what you ask them to do if they're smart and well trained. Cats have their own agenda,' Weiss said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Thankfully, advances in CGI have made it easier to feature felines - omitting its use in the movie adaptation of Cats, which almost singlehandedly ruined an entire species' reputation.
But for director Michael Sarnoski, it was important to keep Frodo real in a film that centres human connection over the predominantly fearful tension of its predecessors.
'We managed it with incredible cat trainers and incredible cat performers. Everyone assumed we wouldn't be able to pull it off the old fashioned way, but I'm really happy we did,' Sarnoski told The Hollywood Reporter.
Despite the fact cats have been gracing movies for over a century - a Maltese kitty named Pepper was reportedly the first after being born on the California lot of Keystone Studios in 1912 - there's still a notable lack of recognition for their cinematic contributions.
While canines get the Palm Dog Award at the Cannes Film Festival and invited to the Oscars, cats are left longing for the halcyon days of ancient Egypt.
May we suggest a Pussy Palm? Some sort of golden feather on a stick award?
When asked for comment, my Persian cat Gertrude looks incredulous and walks away after being refused a (highly unethical) bribe of Dreamies.
Who am I kitten? They don't give a damn about any of this. Catnip and cardboard boxes will suffice.