Another important supporting role goes to Pyewacket, Miss Novak\u2019s cat. Particularly charming is the bond the two seem to have had. She looks quite comfortable handling him. He sprawls and hangs like a limp towel on her shoulder (mentioned in this previous post on other cat actors), and the way he stretches himself against her body, he certainly seems comfortable with her.<\/p>\n
Kim Novak may have taken him for a model for her role, with her slow, feline, graceful, deliberate movements, her penetrating gaze, her casual, low, lazy speech. She does not appear emotionally brittle as she does in her previous films mentioned here, \u201cPicnic\u201d and \u201cStrangers When We Meet\u201d, or \u201cVertigo\u201d, in which she also started with James Stewart. Here, though her character is complicated and mysterious, she comes off as a much stronger, focused person.But she is not without her troubles. Miss Novak is bored with her life, and wistfully wonders what it would be like not to be a witch. We are told that witches cannot blush, or cry, or fall in love, and that if they ever did fall in love, they would lose their powers. Novak wonders what it would be like to be in love.<\/p>\n
On Christmas Eve at the local witch dive, she confesses her Christmas depression (which might make her more human after all), and ruminates, \u201cDon\u2019t you ever wish we weren\u2019t what we are — that you could spend Christmas Eve in a little church listening to carols instead of bongo drums?\u201d<\/p>\n