The Cat's Meow

God, I love the 20's and all of the black and white. Oh, and Kirsten Dunst.

Hey, speaking of the 20’s, B&M, and K. Dunst, The Cat’s Meow coincidentally showcases all three! A trifecta of beauty and ambiguous color palettes and class and oh my god is that a butterfly headpiece?!?

The Cat’s Meow is a whodunit decade film set in the 1920’s Old Hollywood scene. Hnng, aren’t you dying already? It’s a notoriously fictionalized account of what happened on the infamous November 1924 cruise held aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht, in honor of Hollywood producer Thomas H. Ince's birthday.

Among the rich and famous in attendance on W.R.’s (played by Edward Herrmann) yacht is his longtime companion and actress Marion Davies (Dunst), who is suspected of being a gold-digger given she’s seeing a man twice her age, as well as fellow actor Charlie Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), writer Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumely), columnist Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly), and actress Margaret Livingston (Claudia Harrison). Basically, they’re all fabulous.

And now for the scandal. ~Secretely~ Marion and Charlie are have a ~secret~ affair that they keep ~secret~. Scandalous! (~Secretly~)

So, everyone knows. And this makes W.R. all paranoid and jealous and it’s just not good. And so, as history tells us, Thomas H. Ince (Cary Elwes) is shot and killed and we all wanna know whodunit.

Caroline de Vivaise was The Cat’s Meow costume designer and killed it as far as I’m concerned. Every single piece of clothing in this film is so thoughfully picked out and fully relevant during this decade and just so damn glamorous, it’s wonderful. As a subtle homage to the photography used during this period, Vivaise designed all of the clothing in black and white which made everyone look kind of angelic, but hinted at darkness especially when their surroundings were either the white pristine top deck of the boat afloat in the sparkling blue water or when the characters mixed into the deep mahogany walls, dark purple sheets and forest green plants on the lower decks where the shooting takes place.

 

I can't decide if I want to classify this as a romantic drama, murder mystery, or smorgasbord of headpiece/hat magic, either way it's a highly underrated film. And, like I said, there's Kirsten Dunst, dressed in black and white in the 1920's. How can you go wrong?