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New Documentary produced and narrated by Martin Scorsese on the life and work on the films of Val Lewton. It premiered tonight on Turner Classic Movies and has occasioned the reissue of the box set of the Lewton RKO horror films on DVD. To be honest I don't think this is really a documentary so much as its film essay on the Lewton produced films and his life. There is no nitty gritty about the making of the films (the fact that one of his films occasioned the last screen teaming of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi is not mentioned). If one wants details one has to look to the documentary that was originally released with the DVD set, Shadows in the Dark:The Val Lewton Legacy. Here Scorsese talks about the deeper meanings of the films Lewton over saw and how they affected the people who saw them.Its clear that Scorsese is in love with the poetry of the movies, and its nice to have him as a guide into their recesses, indeed watching the film I picked up a good many details that I had never noticed before. It also reveals symbols and character types that reoccur in his movies. Its an examination of how Lewton's melancholy nature produced some very dark and troubling films, films which echo to this day. I liked the film a great deal but I'm not in love with it. While I learned some new things I didn't learn enough (I think the earlier Shadows in the Dark is slightly better, but that may be purely a matter of personal taste).Its very good but there is something that keeps me from saying its great. Is it worth seeing, absolutely, it will reveal many things to you about the films that you probably never noticed. Ultimately it will make you want to see all the films again, which is a pretty good thing if you ask me

Val Lewton was another one of these guys (Sol Wurtzel was another) who was terrific at making "A" pictures on a "B" budget. To this day, Lewton's horror films are fairly well-known and receive wonderful notices by critics and film historians.

This look at the somewhat-but-not altogether famous filmmaker is a 77-minute very interesting excursion that was made, I believe, for the Turner Classic Movie (TCM) network, and was aired several times recently (mid January of 2008). I assume it will run numerous times on the network, in future months. Director Martin Scorcese narrates this tale about Lewton, his history and his films.

Some of the comments that particularly caught my ear, made by either Scorcese, Val Lewton's son, or by someone else in here, included:

"His movies moved and spoke to audiences in a different way....Lewton's films were more terror than horror....He was always at odds with his bosses but never satisfied with is own achievements....There is no film footage of him, no voice recordings of him.......He had no inkling he would be remembered by posterity......Many scenes in his films reflected his own phobias and views on life, as an outsider......We are all potentially evil and possible murderers."

Some of Lewton's films are examined in detail, beginning with "The Cat People," followed by "I Walked With A Zombie," "The Leopard Man," "Curse Of The Cat People," and to a lesser extant, films that followed those. It was interesting to hear about his struggles with RKO and his unexpected success later with Boris Karloff in several of his movies ("The Body Snatcher" being his best, in many people's opinion.) We also hear from directors Roger Corman, Jacques Tourneur (who worked with Lewton on a number of films) and the famous Robert Wise.

This is a long documentary - and it is definitely slanted in favor of Lewton - and might have been more effectively edited down to an hour, but still pretty fascinating. I recognized the voice of actor Elias Koteas, who was reading some of the comments Lewton made over the years, almost in dairy or autobiographical form.

Some of the Lewton's film clips shown here will just about give you chills watching them. This man was a master at frightening you with things unseen.

VAL LEWTON gave us many wonderful horror films throughout the '40s, but at one time he worked as a reader for David O. Selznick and told the producer his feelings about GONE WITH THE WIND: "This is the biggest piece of rubbish I've ever read. You'll be making the biggest mistake of your career if you decide to make this." (paraphrasing, of course). Well, he may never qualify as an accurate prophet, but he did know how to use subtle horror to make films like THE CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE.

MARTIN SCORSESE narrates this thoughtful documentary on the producer with many interesting film clips from the low-budget horror films that are now considered film classics of their kind by a man who was "drawn to the darkness of the shadow world." He trusted many of his associates when he began filming the features at RKO with men like Jacques Tourneur, Nicholas Musuraca, DeWitt Bodeen, Roy Webb, and later Mark Robson. His films had an hypnotic effect on audiences, providing subtle horror through the power of suggestion.

In private, he was a sensitive man, never fully satisfied with his work or his assignments, but happily married to a woman who understood him and his needs. He was really not tough enough to be a Hollywood survivor and had a few heart attacks before the major one that killed him at the age of 46.

The documentary tells how he ignited the career of BORIS KARLOFF when Karloff was assigned to films like ISLE OF THE DEAD, THE BODY SNATCHERS and BEDLAM. As the war drew to a close, people began to turn away from horror films and Lewton's career began to decline when the defining films of his earlier career were no longer being made.

His low-budget films really were low-budget: for CAT PEOPLE he was given a budget of $150,000, but the film was a huge hit, made a million at the box-office when only A-budget features made as much and stayed in big city theaters longer than CITIZEN KANE that year!

Strange how sometimes one does not always see what others see. That is the germ of the artist.

Scorcese clearly delves deeply into the world of Val Lewton, practically an unknown artist in the golden era of the movies which was sadly unlauded sufficiently during his law.

We see what so many of us probably didn't see or were not able to analyze as adeptly as Scorcese in Lewton's work. Certainly, these are not the grade A pictures we all know about, but Scorcese thrusts them into their well-deserved prominence by explaining how really fabulous Lewton's falsely relegated B-pictures they were. Sure they were low budget - but WHAT Lewton did was nothing short of miracles of mood, suspense and mystery, contrast and hue and the deep character development which exists within a movie and not necessarily a protagonist. We are shown, and it is explained just how Lewton worked his magic with shoestring budgets.

I've seen some of these movies, but never in this way...and after this, I will always bring with me the wonderful aura of the prodigious talent of Val Lewton.

Martin Scorcese waxes poetic over one of his favorite talents, Val Lewton, the producer of cult classics such as The Cat People, The Seventh Victim, I Walked with a Zombie, etc. Lewton's unique outlook on life was present in all of his dark films, which were actually B horror movies with some heavy messages. The most interesting of these for me was The Cat People, which I first saw as a child, and Curse of the Cat People, which I saw recently, and these were my main reasons for watching this documentary, that and the fact that Nazimova was his aunt. I confess that I saw The Seventh Victim and either I wasn't paying attention or I'm thick or both, but I didn't get it. I'm not a horror person so I definitely wouldn't be able to get through anything else of his.

Of interest was the fact that he started off in movies working for David O. Selznick, so he learned from a master. The other interesting thing is that not much is really known about Lewton himself, evidently a very private person. Like many artists, he wasn't fully appreciated while he was alive - which wasn't long. He died when he was 46.

The Cat People remains one of the most fascinating movies ever made, and it was good to hear one person comment that the Kent Smith character seems like a really nice guy but actually isn't -- my feelings exactly; and what a treat to see the child Veronica Lake lookalike, Ann Carter Newton, all grown up, and hear what she had to say about making The Curse of the Cat People.

Viewers should find this interesting, and if you like the genre and aren't familiar with Lewton's work, you will be inspired to see it.

Born in Yalta in the early 1900s to Russian parents, film producer Val Lewton was raised in America by his mother and sister, honing a colorful imagination even through his years at military school; he wrote articles and published a few pulpy stories before landing in Hollywood as protégé to David O. Selznick. Selznick turned out to be a helpful boss but was no father-figure, rarely if ever giving Lewton credit for the work he did on pictures such as "Anna Karenina" and "Gone With the Wind". A movie-producing offer eventually came from financially-strapped RKO, who hoped a series of low-budget thrillers would get them back in the black, and Val Lewton was on his way. This documentary on Lewton's career (produced in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies by Martin Scorsese, who also narrates) is nearly bereft of details on Lewton's personal life, mostly due to the fact no documents exist of his recorded voice. Photos and letters written by Lewton help to fill in the gaps, but we never get much sense of the reported turmoils and trouble Lewton went through while working in Hollywood. We also are not privy to much information that went on in the RKO offices with each new Lewton release, only that his films were "successful" up to and including 1946's "Bedlam". If all or most of his films were so popular, what accounted for Lewton's anxieties? He and his wife raised two children--a girl who is unaccounted for here, and a son who has grown up seemingly in the dark regarding his father's business affairs--but what happened to his supporters? Editor Mark Robson and director Robert Wise, themselves protégés of Val Lewton, later found success on their own but failed to extend an olive branch to Lewton once tastes in Hollywood changed. Yet, instead of acknowledging the fact that Lewton was out of step with the times, Robson and Wise are left looking like false friends. The special is clip-heavy, with a finely-tuned parallel atmosphere to compliment the array of sequences, yet it doesn't cut very deep. Still, if the central desire here was to create an interest in Val Lewton's productions for audiences unaware of his languid, elegiac and stylized mood pieces, then "The Man in the Shadows" certainly succeeds. It thoughtfully whets the appetite for an evening's worth of Lewton product, and the artful way in which he was able to combine good and evil with the most subtle of touches.

"The Man In the Shadows" is a fairly interesting bio-documentary that covers the life and career of low-budget, B-movie producer, Val Lewton, who worked almost exclusively for RKO Studios (poverty row) from the years 1942-1951.

Originally from Russia - Lewton was clearly one of those very resourceful men who knew just how to produce good quality horror pictures on budgets of only $150,000, or less.

Through stills, film clips, and interviews - The viewer learns all about the ins & outs of being a successful, but unappreciated, film producer like Lewton.

*Note* - In 1951 (at the age of 46) Val Lewton died from a heart attack.

There are many people in movie history the likes of which will probably never be seen again, since many great films are a product of a person existing at a certain point in time and having certain ideas. Val Lewton, while not a director, is legendary in the realm of old horror movies for producing some of the most groundbreaking pictures of 40s cinema, such as Cat People, The Ghost Ship, I Walked With a Zombie, and Isle of the Dead. Born in the Russian Empire in 1904, Volodymyr Ivanovich Leventon was brought with his mother (who left his father behind in Berlin) to America via a ship which sailed from Hamburg. Once in New York, he eventually changed his name to Val Lewton. His first major claim to fame in the movie industry came in 1932, when a Clark Gable and Carole Lombard film (No Man of Her Own) was released. While not involved with the movie, Lewton had written a novel called No Bed of Her Own, which served to inspire it. He continued to acquire experience by working at MGM's publicity office, providing magazines comic versions of trending films. He would eventually leave this position when he had 3 subsequent novelizations that weren't very successful. Flying to California to meet with future Gone With the Wind producer David O Selznick, he was tasked with writing a possible script for a movie based on the russian novel Taras Bulba. The film never got made, but Lewton held onto his new position of being David's assistant. Although not a well known fact, Lewton actually was involved with Gone With the Wind, writing the part that shows countless wounded and dying Confederate soldiers in the city of Atlanta, then under attack from Northern forces. It is this morbid scene that gives the world a taste of what Lewton will be known for a few years later. In 1942, Lewton was given control of his own unit at RKO pictures. Tasked with making horror films that could rival Universal's monumental classics such as Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde, Lewton nevertheless had to follow a set of rules. He was not allowed to make use of more than 150 grand, he could not make up the titles, and none were to exceed an hour and 15 minutes. He first threw his hat in the ring with Cat People, a 1942 production that focuses on a newly married Serbian immigrant woman who believes she is cursed to become a panther every time a man gets intimate with her. The movie defied expectations and Lewton had the last laugh: it was cheaply made, but grossed over a million dollars. He followed up with I Walked with a Zombie, directed by Jacques Tourneur (who also did the previous one). Still very creepy today, the movie focuses on a girl that two brothers both like, and the nurse that takes care of her on a remote island in the Caribbean. While RKO was basking in the success Lewton had reaped for them, he finally was in a position to make his next movies without them really getting in his way. While RKO decided to promote Tourneur to directing higher budget movies, Lewton stayed where he was, which was probably just as well; the more expensive your movie, the more you have to deal with studios breathing down your neck. With Tourneur out of the picture, Lewton gave Robert Wise and Mark Robson director status. The Body Snatcher followed in 1945, which features Boris Karloff as a horse carriage driver who secretly commits murders at night in order to deliver corpses to a medical professor for use in his class. Lewton walked on thin ice with this one, as the Production Code wanted less violence in movies, but RKO wanted more of it. Boris also appeared in Isle of the Dead that same year, which is about a military officer (played by Karloff) who goes to a plague-infested island in 1912 to visit his wife's grave. Karloff later credited Lewton with saving him from being hopelessly typecast as Frankenstein for the rest of his life. In terms of good movies, this was about the end of the line for Lewton. In 1946, RKO boss Charles Koerner died, and the studio fell into chaos. Lewton fled RKO and found a new job at Paramount, producing My Own True Love in 1949. After this, Lewton went back to MGM in order to produce the comedy Please Believe Me, starring Deborah Kerr. It should be said that comedy was not Lewton's strong suit. Around this time, Lewton tried to do what he always wanted and start his own production company with his old friends Robson and Wise, where he had the power to choose what to produce. Lewton was eventually forced away from them after they couldn't agree on what to produce. In 1951, he produced his last film, Apache Drums. Although it was to be his final movie, it incorporated two firsts for him, as it was a western that was in color. After this, he would be offered a production job at Columbia working alongside Stanley Kramer, but the pressure of producing so many films so fast caught up to him, and he died of a heart attack at only 46. It is maybe correct to say the film business killed him, but as morbid as his movies were, Lewton was an important part of film history. If he was a more cheerful and positive person, we probably wouldn't have these films. As someone who has barely ever heard Scorcese's voice, this was a good documentary on a person who has produced some of my favorite old movies. There's a few I have not mentioned, but put simply, they can't be described with words. You'll have to see them in order to observe how Lewton deftly combined light with shadow, and darkness with mysterious wonder. Lewton's movies were special since they have that quiet and cozy feel to them, the perfect things to watch during a storm for instance. I used to think all old movies had this trait, but it's more rare than you think. Lewton's ability to tell great stories with engaging characters played by underappreciated actors made him a genius in the film world. He didn't have money for special effects, but he didn't need them.

Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows (2008)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Martin Scorsese produced and narrates this documentary that takes a look at the life and career of producer Val Lewton who hated the horror genre but become best known for his horror titles like The Body Snatcher, Bedlam, I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People. I personally find many of Lewton's horror movies overrated but they are popular so I understand the need to do a documentary on them but to do one on Lewton never really made much sense to me. It's even more senseless when you consider that another documentary, Shadows in the Dark was just made in 2005. As with that documentary, there really isn't much to Lewton so we learn very little. He didn't do interviews, didn't have any on camera stuff and in reality there's very little known about him so we don't learn a thing. When they discuss the movies we still don't learn anything outside the fact that Lewton hated horror movies and didn't want to work with Boris Karloff. Since there's nothing to Lewton I just can't justify having two documentaries about him and in the end neither of them do much. Roger Corman, Robert Wise and Japanese director Kiyoski Kurosawa are the only movie people interviewed and both only get a few clips.

Excellent documentary examines Lewton's life, from his arrival in Hollywood and sponsorship by his aunt Nazimova, to an 8 year stint working for David O. Selznick, to his arrival at RKO and his setting up a low budget horror film unit. The documentary examines each film he made, from "Cat People" (1942) to his final film "Apache Drums" (1951). Lewton had a deep streak of pessimism in his nature, and that deeply influenced his films.

This is one of the two best documentaries I've seen for the first time this year. A must see for horror film lovers, and those who admire Lewton's films. Documentary gets at what made Lewton tick, so to speak.

How well I remember seeing Cat People for the first time. I was almost bowled over by my first sight of poetic horror. It was the 1950's and cheap monsters were all over the drive-ins, fun, but hardly mesmerizing. Then, suddenly, there was Lewton's flick on the late show and I was transfixed by a whole new world of fright movies. The shadowy b&w was riveting, but the shadows of my imagination were beyond even that. As they say- a whole new world had opened up.

Over time, I managed to catch the bulk of Lewton's extraordinary canon, especially The Seventh Victim (1943). That movie's bold ending showed what film censorship typically denied us. I tried to learn more about Lewton, but movie books were almost non-existent at a time when movies were still not considered an art form. To say that Lewton was an obscure moviemaker in a time of Ford, Huston, and De Mille seems almost an understatement. It wasn't until I got a collection of James Agee's magazine reviews that I saw Lewton's brilliance publicly affirmed.

Thanks now to Matin Scorsese, later generations can dive into Lewton's fascinating world in a single sitting. The 75-minutes is replete with clips from his best films, along with commentary from Lewton directors Robert Wise and Jacques Tourneur, and other luminaries. Too bad the illustrious part of his career was so brief, brought down by studio maneuvering. More importantly, Lewton's work shows how unparalled b&w artistry continues even in our era of colorized spectacle. Plus, Lewton uses the spooky not only to open up horror but to lead us into the unique world of a lonely child (Curse of the Cat People, {1944}). Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but I'll bet if you tune in, you'll be as fascinated as I was on that long ago night.

Very interesting bio doc of one of Hollywood's few notable movie producer/auteurs (some others being Thalberg, Selznick and, if you're feeling generous, Robert Evans). As Kent Jones' film nicely brings out, what separates Lewton from other producer/purveyors of scariness, like Corman or Castle, is that the fear and terror lie not in the monster without, the one with scales, antennae or fangs, but rather in the realization that, unbekownst to us, the Beast In The Jungle has burrowed inside our collective consciences. Which is what makes Lewton's best films like 'Cat People", "I Walked With A Zombie" and "Curse Of The Cat People" so utterly unsettling. And why the loss of this cinematic genius at forty six feels so tragic.

Had Lewton lived to, say, seventy six and been productive into the 1970s how would he have fared? Who knows? I'd like to think he would have moved into TV and perhaps rivaled Serling and eclipsed Dan Curtis. Although ,with his melancholy, overly sensitive persona (which should have been given more extensive treatment in this film), I could also see him going back to writing dark novels. Or maybe he'd have moved to Italy and hooked up with Bava.

Bottom line: Can't wait to see "Leopard Man" again. B plus.

PS...Good narration from Scorsese. His light, feathery, slightly creepy voice matches Lewton's uneasy mood.

This documentary is narrated by Martin Scorsese....an incredibly important film director but also a man with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the history of cinema...an excellent choice. As for the subject of the documentary, it gives the viewer a decent overview of his movies and is great if you are unacquainted with his work. On the negative side, I noticed two things. Val Lewton's personal life is barely talked about and it really was hard to know and understand the man as I watched the film. Additionally, Lewton only produced a handful of movies...just 14. Because of this, you may find the film a bit unsatisfying.

Val Lewton is a deeply respected hero of American cinema, but his works are best appreciated without scholars telling you why Lewton's contributions are so important. To begin with, it's disrespectful to the directors of Lewton's films to have film historians waxing on about every detail and crediting Lewton almost exclusively, as if he was the director. In the event that you never noticed before, Hollywood is collectively its own biggest fan. Watching Turner Classic Movies on a regular basis will expose you to film experts and movie people gushing over past works as if God himself, or perhaps they were interim Dr. Frankensteins acting as proxy creators. Martin Scorsese is almost as well known for his embellishments on the topic as he is for his own pictures.

"Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows" is a library of prose praising the visual style, the dialog, the lighting, the mood -- attributes normally credited to the director, as if the actual directors of these films were merely showing up and collecting a check while Lewton commandeered every job on and off the set. The fault is, as noted before, the self-referential adoration from the industry itself of its own offspring. Imagine for a moment having to hear such praise of one's work from carpenters, mechanics, teachers, civil servants, construction crews...it would be appalling to be subjected to poetic essays on the greatness of their jobs which are, truth be known, of much greater significance to society as a whole.

The moral of the story: the entertainment industry needs to get over itself, do its job and go home. The single benefit of this production is that the films highlighted can be looked at as more detailed trailers, even though the films represented are quite a bit overstated. Let movies entertain you and forget the idea that experts need to teach you how to enjoy them.

This 90-minute documentary paints quite a vivid portrait of Russian-born film producer, Val Lewton who had worked primarily through RKO Studios (in Hollywood) during the 1940s.

Lewton was an inspired film producer who knew just how to create good quality pictures on super-low budgets. This is especially evident with such B-grade films as - "Cat People", "The Leopard Man", and "I Walked With A Zombie".