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Directed By
Charles Laughton
Written By:
James Agee, James Agee
Cast:
Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish, Don Beddoe, Peter Graves, James Gleason, Billy Chapin, Gloria Castillo, Corey Allen, Paul Bryar, Evelyn Varden, Sally Jane Bruce, Mary Ellen Clemons, Cheryl Callaway
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The Night of the Hunter (1955)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
January 25th, 2008
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'The Night of the Hunter' is a marvelous movie, one that has been overlooked for decades, and still has not gotten the respect it so rightfully deserves. It was the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton, it features Robert Mitchum's best performance, its imagery is both chilling and beautiful, yet audiences ignored it when it was first released, and this is perhaps the reason why Laughton gave up his career as a director. Laughton was, in my view, one of the greatest actors of the 1930s, and he offered the definitive portrayal of Captain Bligh, in the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, with Clark Gable, if you see the Bugs Bunny parodies of this character, it is Laughton he is trying to imitate. He won an Oscar for his role as Henry VIII and delivered the most sympathetic Quasimodo, in the 1939 version of Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also played Inspector Javert in Les Miserables (alongside Frederic March) and the artist Rembrandt van Rijn in Alexander Korda's 1936 classy biopic. He was married to Elsa Lanchester, best known for her role in The Bride of Frankenstein. Who knows what could have become of him if he had continued directing? 'The Night of the Hunter' is stark and terrifying, and many scenes from it are well-known. Henry Powell (Mitchum), the psychotic preacher, has the words love and hate tattooed across the knuckles of each hand. These words illustrate his duplicitous character; he professes to be deeply religious, able to talk to God, yet he marries widows and murders them, especially ones he believes to have sizable amounts of wealth. His latest target is Willa Harper (Shelley Winters).
Her husband, Ben (Peter Graves) committed a robbery and hid the money, revealing its location only to his two children, John and Pearl. He mentions the crime while in prison, mumbling in his sleep, before being executed, and he happens to share a cell with Powell. Willa falls for him. She gets encouragement from Mrs. Spoon (Evelyn Varden), who thinks it wrong for a woman to be raising kids by herself, and who is also taken in by Powell. Never have hymns been so ominous as when Powell sings "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms', which often announces his presence. John dislikes and distrusts him from the start, and intuits that he is only after the money. It is not long before Willa turns up dead, an amazing shot reveals her body at the bottom of a lake, discovered by an old fisherman. John and Pearl are now on their own. They attempt to hide from Powell in the basement, and in one of those famous scenes I mentioned earlier, he calls to them from the top of the stairs.
Later, again in the basement, he is searching for the money John has told him is buried under a rock in the floor. The contents of a shelf fall on his head, and he lumbers after the children, following them up the stairs, arms outreached, very much like a monster. They lock him in, and get on a boat, which they use to sail upriver. Along the way, we notice the animals watching them, frogs and turtles, until they end up being found by Mrs. Cooper (Lillian Gish), who runs a fruit farm and cares for orphaned or abandoned children. Powell pursues them on horseback, and finally confronts the stalwart, Bible-fearing Cooper, who sees right through him and is prepared to defend John and Pearl with a shotgun.
Gish was 62 when this film was released, and she gives one of her finest performances. Mitchum provides one of cinema's most sinister villains, and one can note the similarities between Powell and Max Cady from Cape Fear. Both are cold-blooded killers, and Mitchum is the perfect choice for each one, imposing in stature, his voice gravelly yet smooth, and both characters have a mysterious magnetism that makes them extremely appealing to women, especially younger women, like Willa and Ruby, the oldest child in Mrs. Cooper's care. The brooding and brilliant cinematography by Stanley Cortez is deeply expressive and evocative. And then there are the sexual themes, Powell's knife as a phallic symbol, and his use of violence as a substitute for sex; he turns down Willa's offer to consummate their marriage, and then subsequently murders her.
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