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The Night of the Hunter

Nutshell Review:  The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Director:  Charles Laughton
Starring:  Robert Mitchum, Shelly Winters, Lilian Gish, Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce
Studio: United Artists
My IMDB Rating:  8
Viewing:   The Robert Mitchum Film Collection DVD  20th Century Fox/MGM 
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Plot: 
​ Harry Powell (Mitchum) is an itinerant preacher, conman & murderer, hell bent on destroying what he believes the Lord hates, namely “Perfume smellin’ things, lacy things & things with curly hair.”   His main line of work seems to explaining in preacher-ly fashion the story of love & hate, as tattooed on his knuckles, bilking widows out of their money & then killing them. When a cellmate, condemned to die for murder, admits to hiding $10,000, Powell has a new calling, searching for the money and killing anyone who gets in his way.  Finding & seducing the widow Willa Harper (Winters) is no difficult task for the smooth talking preacher man, nor is wheedling his way into her young daughter Pearl’s (Bruce) heart.  Where he has difficulty is with her son John, a weary and standoffish child, suspicious of everyone & protective of his sister & their secret knowledge of the money’s location.   Once married to the widow he commences to pump her for the money’s location & when she clearly doesn’t know he dispatches her & trains his wrath on the children.  When the children escape and find their way to a home for orphans run by the kindly Ms. Cooper (Gish), all appears lost for Powell, until a chance encounter leads him right to the children & the inevitable standoff between goodness and evil.
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Thoughts: 
​
The Night of the Hunter is a film about the battle between good & evil.  As Powell repeatedly explains the tattoos on his knuckles in terms of the struggle mankind has between the two, he could just as easily have been describing the struggle within himself, accept there is only malice and hatred.  The good in his story becomes an abstract until the third act of the film and only then through the destruction of Powell & the evil incarnate he represents does goodness prevail. While evil has many faces, including malice, lust and most particularly greed, goodness in the form of Ms. Cooper & innocence in the form of Pearl are rare.  Goodness ultimately wins this battle, but as laid out in The Night of the Hunter, evil will rise again and is a powerful advisory.
Nobody could embody the physical menace that Robert Mitchum could when a part called for it. Physically imposing, with huge hands & shoulders, Harry Powell is one such character, filled with animus and hatred, a cypher walking the earth destroying the innocent.  Mitchum’s portrayal of Powell is unlike any other performance in his cannon.  Producer Paul Gregory thought of Mitchum immediately after purchasing the rights to the story, noting “he was a man who could project great charm, and yet there was a sense of evil lurking under the surface.”  (Server, Robert Mitchum P. 265) While Powell has much in common with Cape Fear’s Max Cady, however,  Mitchum’s performance is very different. Cady is classic Mitchum, calm, deliberate and thoughtful, just in the guise of spiteful vengeance, while Powell is a talkative charlatan, perfectly comfortable spinning webs of verbal deceit as he inflicts his malevolent charm.   While still moving in the deliberate fashion that Mitchum’s character typically move, the verbal barrage Powell unleashes on those he is hell bent on deceiving casts a spell that intoxicates.  He finds the weak spot in any person’s character,  then attacks that weakness with word play until they either submit or are eliminated.  Walt Spoon is easily turned to drink & Willa Harper has first lust in her heart, then the righteous teaching of God as she blindly allows Powell to lead her to her death.
Mitchum worked with Laughton to hone his character, while the director set about to create a mise en scene unlike anything that was being made in Hollywood at the time.  Mitchum’s manner of speaking & the dialogue itself were both from another era, with flourishes of Southern gothic and sing song gospel elocution, all meant to destabilize his victims and the audience.  Similarly, Laughton & cinematographer Stanley Cortez used the images to cast a disquieting aura on the movie as well, shooting Mitchum upside down while he delivers lines in the jail cell, for example, putting him in silhouette while riding his horse across the countryside & creating the illusion that Powell’s bedchamber as some kind of church nave.  In each instance, they warped expectations by either adding levity, placing Mitchum outside of society looking in or further twisting the religious overtones of his character. 
Considered expressionistic in its visual & verbal style, The Night of the Hunter was not well received when it was first released.  Many of the techniques Laughton & his team used were considered passe by the mid-fifties.  Forced perspective, like the scene in the churchlike bedroom and intense use of shadows created a dreamlike feeling throughout the film, played counter to the naturalistic style of filmmaking prevalent in 50’s films like On the Waterfront (’54) & Marty (’55).  Furthermore, United Artists, which had financed the film, had no idea how to promote it.  Lee Server, Mitchum’s biographer wrote about the film saying “like Citizen Kane (’41), King Kong (’33) & The General (’26), and few others-that seemed to come out of nowhere, following no tradition or precedent, a work of astonishing originality.”  (Robert Mitchum:  Baby, I Don’t Care.  Lee Server. P. 272)  It’s originality was cold comfort to Laughton, who reportedly sunk in to a 7 month long depression and never directed a film again.
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Category:  Film Noir, Thriller

See Also:  Elmer Gantry (’60), Cape Fear (’62), Shadow of a Doubt (’43)
Random Notes & Quotes: 

*Davis Grubb, the novelist of The Night of the Hunter, would only write on trains and refused to travel on anything other than a train or a bike.  He provided sketches of the scenes from his book, as he imagined them, & sent them to Laughton throughout the production.

*Lawrence Olivier was once interested in the part of Preacher Powell, but Laughton always thought that Mitchum was the only actor and particularly the only American actor right for the part.
​
*The figure in the car at the bottom of the lake is a wax figure of Shelly Winters & 8 huge arc lights suspended by a crane lit the scene shot in a large tank on the Republic lot.  Wind machines were positioned to carefully blow her hair and the seaweed to create a dreamlike shot.

*The Night of the Hunter was shot in just 36 days.
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  • Home
  • Top 10 Lists
    • My Top 10 Favorite Movies
    • Top 10 Heist Movies
    • Top 10 Neo-Noir Films
    • The Top 10 Films of the Troubles (1969-1998) >
      • The Troubles Selected Timeline
    • Top 10 Films from 2001
    • Director Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Film Noir Directors
      • Top 10 Coen Brothers Films
      • Top 10 John Ford Films
      • Top 10 Samuel Fuller Films
      • Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films
      • Top 10 John Huston Films
      • Top 10 Fritz Lang Films (American)
      • Val Lewton Top 10
      • Top 10 Ernst Lubitsch Films
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      • Top 10 Billy Wilder Films
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      • Top 10 Joan Blondell Movies
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    • Top 10 Noir Films (Classic Era)
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    • Top 10 Actresses of the 1930's
  • Reviews
    • Quick Hits: Short Takes on Recent Viewing >
      • Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache
      • Elevator to the Gallows ('58)
      • Days of Heaven
      • Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
      • Incindies (2010)
      • In the Mood For Love (2000)
      • Last Picture Show Teaser Intro
      • Le Silence De La Mer ('49)
      • The Princess Bride ('87) Intro
      • Pulp Fiction ('94) Intro
    • The 1910's >
      • The Lubitsch German Silents
    • The 1920's >
      • The Odessa Steps Sequence as Continuing Film History
      • Sunrise (1927)
      • Wild Orchids ('29)
    • The 1930's >
      • Becky Sharp (1935)
      • Blonde Crazy
      • Bombshell ('33)
      • The Cheat
      • The Conquerors
      • The Crowd Roars
      • The Divorcee
      • Frank Capra & Barbara Stanwyck: The Evolution of a Romance
      • Heroes for Sale
      • The Invisible Man (1933)
      • L'Atalante (1934)
      • Let Us Be Gay
      • My Man Godfrey
      • No Man of Her Own (1932)
      • Platinum Blonde ('31)
      • Reckless ('35)
      • The Sign of the Cross (1932)
      • The Sin of Nora Moran (1932)
      • True Confession ('37)
      • Virtue ('32)
      • The Women
    • The 1940's >
      • Casablanca (1942)
      • The Story of Citizen Kane
      • Criss Cross (1949)
      • Double indemnity
      • Jean Arthur in A Foreign Affair
      • The Killers 1946 & 1964 Comparison
      • The Maltese Falcon Intro
      • Moonrise (1948)
      • My Gal Sal (1942)
      • Nightmare Alley
      • Notorious Intro ('46)
      • Overlooked Christmas Movies of the 1940's
      • Pursued (1947)
      • Remember the Night ('40)
      • The Red Shoes (1948)
      • The Set-Up ('49)
      • They Won't Believe Me (1947)
      • The Third Man
    • The 1950's >
      • The Asphalt Jungle Secret Cinema Intro
      • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ('58) Intro
      • The Crimson Kimono (1959)
      • A Face in the Crowd (1957)
      • In a Lonely Place
      • A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
      • Mogambo ('53)
      • Niagara (1953)
      • The Night of The Hunter ('55)
      • Pushover Noir City
      • Rear Window (1954)
      • Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
      • Red Dust ('32 vs Mogambo ('53)
      • The Searchers ('56)
      • Singin' in the Rain Introduction
      • Some Like It Hot ('59) >
        • Some Like it Hot Intro (Beyond the Bay)
    • The 1960's >
      • The April Fools (1969)
      • Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
      • Cape Fear ('62)
      • Cool Hand Luke (1967) Intro
      • Dr Strangelove Intro
      • For a Few Dollars More (1965)
      • Fistful of Dollars (1964)
      • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1968)
      • The Hustler ('61) Intro
      • The Man With No Name Trilogy
      • The Misfits ('61)
      • The Umbrellas of Cherbourg/La La Land
    • The 1970's >
      • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
      • American Graffiti Introduction
      • Chinatown Introduction
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle ('73)
      • Jaws Intro
    • The 1980's >
      • Blood Simple ('84)
      • A Christmas Story Intro
      • Scarface (1983)
    • The 1990's >
      • The General (1998)
    • 2000's >
      • Belfast (2021)
      • Blonde (2022)
      • Hunger (2008)
      • In Bruges (2008)
      • Joy Division
      • Mank (2020)
      • No Man's Land (2001)
      • Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
      • Wall-E
      • Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
      • The Top 10 Films I watched in 2020
  • Artists
    • Actors/Actresses >
      • Joan Blondell
      • Faye Dunaway: 1967-1976
      • The Noir Villainy of Dan Duryea
      • Clark Gable Bio
      • Jean Harlow Bio
      • Veronica Lake
      • Norma Shearer
    • Directors/Producers/Cinematographers >
      • Founders Series: Alice Guy-Blache
      • John Alton
      • Joan Harrison-Producer/Writer
      • Hitchcock & Cary Grant
      • William Wellman
    • Books >
      • Book Reviews >
        • Book Review: Clark Gable by D. Bret
      • Pre-Code
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    • Studio
  • Resources
    • Sight & Sound Top 100 2022
    • NOTES >
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      • Anatomy of a Murder Notes
      • The Asphalt Jungle Outline
      • Breakfast Club Notes
      • Citizen Kane Notes
      • It's A Wonderful Life Notes
      • Rebel Without a Cause Notes
      • Singin' in the Rain Notes
    • CMBA Interview/Profile
    • Bay Cinema Society Press
    • Hollywood History >
      • Production Code
      • Film Noir
  • Video Introductions
    • Video Introductions
  • Last Picture Show Notes
  • Paul Verhoeven