Tourneur, Jacques

Tourneur, Jacques (1904-1977), French film director, born in Paris. Tourneur served his apprenticeship under his father, the film director Maurice Tourneur, working in the United States and then in Paris. Jacques Tourneur returned to the United States in 1935 to direct short films and B-features for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Moving on to RKO, he worked with the producer Val Lewton, and directed some of his most memorable works: for example, Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943). The former is about a beautiful young woman who can apparently transform into a vicious catlike creature. The hideous animal is never seen—a new horror technique introduced by Tourneur, which added to his reputation for evoking strange and terrifying atmospheres.

Tourneur's art lay in playing on the willing imagination of his audience, to create fear through subtle lighting, strange sounds, hinted terror, and tense movement. He was an outstanding craftsman, able to create much out of very little, and therefore a master of the B-feature, which was to become a disregarded art. He made many types of film: there are thrillers, such as Experiment Perilous (1944) and Berlin Express (1948); films noirs, such as the atmospheric Build My Gallows High (1947; aka Out of the Past); and some not undistinguished Westerns, including Great Day in the Morning (1956).