The Night of the Hunter

The Night of the Hunter, released in 1955, was a flop, and thus was the only film ever directed by the actor Charles Laughton. Over time, though, it was become celebrated by the cognoscenti as a delicious example of style, particularly in the use of techniques used by the German expressionists, filtered through the Universal horror films. It also has a slam-bang performance by Robert Mitchum.

Hard to believe it, but I had never seen it before last night. I read in the paper that it's getting a shiny new DVD re-release, but Netflix sent me the old version, a full-screen (there is a definite let-down upon seeing the words "This film has been modified from its original form"). Still, I had a grand time with it.

Mitchum is Harry Powell, a faux preacher who is, in reality, a bluebeard, making his way across rural America, marrying widows, murdering them, and taking their money. We are introduced to him as he rides a Model T across the countryside, having a conversation with God. The film has begun like some hackneyed old thing you might see in Sunday school, with Lillian Gish addressing a crowd of children's faces, cut out against a field of stars, on bewaring false prophets in sheep's clothing. The children are singing, lending a wonderfully creepy feeling to the whole enterprise.

Mitchum gets arrested (that Model T wasn't his), and shares a cell with Peter Graves, who is about to hang for murdering during a robbery. Graves has hidden the loot, and only his small children know where it is. Powell, upon his release, heads to Graves' hometown and woos his widow (Shelley Winters). With unwitting help from a meddling old lady, Winters agrees to marry Mitchum, though her son John (Billy Chapin) sees right through him.

Thus begins the tension of the film, the struggle between Mitchum and Chapin, and one of many Biblical allusions that pepper it. There's Abraham and Isaac, and Cain and Abel, and the story of Moses as he floats down the river in a basket. This one is particularly effective, as Chapin and his sister escape Mitchum by taking a skiff down the Ohio River, with a menagerie of animals looking on from the riverbank. Mitchum, whenever he appears, mellifluously announces himself with the hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," that by the end is guaranteed to send a shiver through you.

The kids end up taken in by Gish, who also sees right through Mitchum, and there's a sublime series of shots of Gish sitting on her porch, holding a shotgun across her lap, while Mitchum waits outside, truly the wolf in sheep's clothing. Gish's role is small, but she owns the final third of the film, as her lines resonate like a ringing bell. Upon watching an owl preying on a rabbit, she says, "It's a hard world for little things," but her closing lines are "The children abide. They endure."

One can see why the film was misunderstood in 1955. Shot like a horror film, it has no supernatural element, and while Mitchum is a terrifying figure, he's not particularly able (he does have the famous tattoos on his fingers--the letters L-O-V-E on the right hand, and H-A-T-E) on the left). It's more about the style, with frequent use of old silent film techniques--I was agog at Laughton's use of an iris. There are many quotes of old horror films: Mitchum, just before he decides what he needs to do with Winters, stands in a window, the moonlight washing over his face, the angles of the bedroom wall seeming to close in on him--it's like something out of Nosferatu. Then, when he corners the kids in the basement, he lurches after them like Frankenstein's monster.

The Night of the Hunter is an example of a film that is actually greater than the sum of its parts. To simply recount the story doesn't do it justice. The mise-en-scene is so palpable that it will stick with a viewer long after its over.