Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary: Adaptation into Genre

Abstract

This chapter argues that Leni’s first film with Universal Pictures, The Cat and the Canary, created a visual and aural iconography that was essential for its cinematic progeny: namely, its remake in 1939, and the broader trend of ‘old spooky house’ narratives in Hollywood filmmaking. An early instalment in the horror-comedy genre, Leni’s 1927 film would later lend formal and affective shape to what trade magazines of the 1920s and 1930s called the thriller-chiller-comedy. Interweaving concurrent film reviews and memos between industry executives, Gordon’s chapter details Leni’s so-called “German” or “European” influence in reference to the film’s visual style and the effect of that style on its viewers. This chapter takes the position that The Cat and the Canary’s stylistic innovations became identifiable as parts of a pattern (or, indeed, a genre) by the 1930s, and, further, that Leni himself was responsible for developing an entirely new formula for Hollywood filmmaking.