The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Directed by Charles Laughton

Film Review

In his provocative 1954 article Une certaine tendance du cinéma français, the critic Français Truffaut bemoaned the fact that French cinema of the early 1950s had succumbed to a stultifying conformity that threatened to turn the art of filmmaking into a mere cookie-cutting exercise.  The innovators and experimentalists of the past had long departed and what remained was a stagnant art form governed more by commercial expediency than a striving for artistic authenticity.  Truffaut's observations could apply just as well to the state of American film production at the time, with profit-conscious Hollywood producers too reluctant to depart from a popular formula that had been honed to perfection in the two decades following the arrival of sound cinema in the late 1920s.  When The Night of the Hunter hit cinema screens in 1955 it was such a radical departure from the norm that no one knew what to make of it.  It was the most fragrantly nonconformist piece of American film art in over three decades, but like a passing UFO it was dismissed as a fleeting aberration.

A film that brazenly defied any attempt at classification, employing a mix of styles and techniques in a way that was breathtakingly daring, and having as its central character a homicidal maniac masquerading as a man of the cloth The Night of the Hunter was guaranteed to be a hard sell to the conservative American public.  Whilst it deals with classic themes - man's dual nature, the degradation of greed, the traumas of childhood, the hypocrisy of religion - it does so in a way that is unstintingly bold and provocative - too bold and too provocative for a contemporary audience.  So adverse was the critical and public reaction to the film that it bombed at the box office, dissuading its director - the highly regarded English actor Charles Laughton - from ever helming another film.

Truffaut was one of a minority of reviewers who were unequivocal in their appreciation of the film's merits when it first came out.  The future director of Les 400 coups and Jules et Jim was fulsome in his praise of the film, describing it as 'experimental cinema that truly experiments' and likening it to a 'horrifying news item retold by small children'.  Most other reviewers were quick to dismiss The Night of the Hunter as crude and pretentiously arty but, half a century on, it now rates as one of the greatest films of all time - on a par with Orson Welles' cinematic monument Citizen Kane (1941).

Hardly anyone (even the most ardent of cinephiles) thinks of Charles Laughton as a film director.  It is as an actor - possibly the finest character actor of his generation - that he is remembered.  A pre-eminent figure in British cinema throughout the 1930s he went on to become a major Hollywood star of the '40s and '50s.  Laughton's early successes include such lavish productions as The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), but it was as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) - his most celebrated role - that he became a screen legend.  Broadway success swiftly ensued, and this was where he first acquired a taste for directing, winning praise for the plays produced by his great friend Paul Gregory.  It was Gregory who first introduced Laughton to Davis Grubb's book The Night of the Hunter, a novelised account of the true story of a West Virginia man who had been hanged in 1932 for murdering two widows and three children.

Laughton was so taken by the book that he persuaded Gregory to back him in its screen adaptation, working closely with Grubb to fully exploit the visual possibilities offered by the dark tale of a modern Bluebeard terrorising innocent children.  Although the screenplay was credited to James Agee (one of the main contributors to John Huston's 1951 hit The African Queen), Laughton disliked Agee's original script so much that he largely rewrote it himself, in an attempt to retain the stark simplicity and narrative power of Grubb's original novel.

Right from the off, Laughton set himself the challenge of making a very different kind of film to the polished 'safe' production that had become de rigueur in Hollywood by the mid-1950s.  It was the convention of the time for screenwriters to lift the key scenes from a novel and build up a film narrative from these, almost as if they were writing for the stage.  Laughton was keen to break with this mechanical 'filmed theatre' approach and try something radically different, with the aim of regaining the expressive visual power of cinema in its earliest years.  In formulating his own aesthetic the aspiring film innovator spent many hours reviewing the silent masterworks of the 1920s, drawing inspiration mostly from the great American cineaste D.W. Griffith, but also from the German expressionists (Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, Robert Wiene).  To help make his creative ambitions a reality, Laughton could not have chosen a more adept and willing cinematographer to assist him than Stanley Cortez, who had distinguished himself on Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).  Cortez was as enthusiastic as Laughton in the attempt to recreate the sharpness and lyricism of the silent movie marvels of the past, and the result of their collaboration is one of the most extraordinary films to come out of an American film studio.

'Fear is only a dream' - this we are told early in the film.  The gnawing sense of the uncanny that makes viewing The Night of the Hunter such an unsettling yet compulsive experience lies in its unstintingly eerie dreamlike composition, its seamless merging of reality and imagination.  It is a film that deals with the dichotomies of human experience with both subtlety and insight, the struggle between man's capacity for evil and his innate goodness powerfully captured not only in the clear moral delineation of the main characters but also in the striking pictorial representations of this most ancient of contests.  The scene in which the fake preacher Harry Powell delivers a sermon in which his righteous right hand struggles against his sinful left hand encapsulates what the film is about.  In the person of Powell - a fraudster with a dangerous schizoid nature - and his opposition to the more virtuous characters (John and Mrs Cooper) we have one of cinema's starkest portrayals of the intrinsic duality of humankind.

Most of what we see is presented through the eyes of the two child protagonists John and Pearl, and it is from this perspective that the central villain Powell (brilliantly interpreted by Robert Mitchum) acquires the power of the most terrifying of fairytale fiends.  Harry Powell is the amalgam of every childhood bogey man and horror movie monstrosity you care to name, more persistently menacing than Elm Street's Freddy Krueger and more viscerally scary than Karloff's Frankenstein's monster.  'Does he ever sleep?' John ponders wearily from the safety of a barn as Powell continues stalking him and his sister across the bleak open spaces of West Virginia.  Through the children's eyes, Powell isn't a thing of flesh and blood, he is a supernatural spectre of the night, the kind that never goes away and will haunt you until your last gasp.  Symbolically, the hunter is that part of us that we fear most - the part of the subconscious will that preys on negative emotion and goads us towards evil. 

Harry Powell's corrupting malignancy is a sickening representation of all that is bad in the human soul, and the reason it is felt so keenly is because of the insidious way it is woven into the fabric of the film - through the boldly expressionistic use of silhouettes and shadows.  When the killer first enters John's life, it is as a gigantic shadow of his head projected onto a bare wall in the boy's bedroom - as spine-tinglingly ominous as the glimpse of the vampire's shadow on the staircase in Murnau's Nosferatu (1922).  The use of harsh lighting, deep focus photography, angular set designs and extremely slanted camera angles all serve to give Powell his superhuman ghoul-like quality, which, combined with Robert Mitchum's naturally inscrutable features, create an utterly chilling sense of pure evil.  The threat posed by Powell is at its most potent in the sequence where he is seen in long shot heading towards the Harper house, with the clear intent of harming the children.  The scene ends with an iris effect (Laughton's most blatant homage to silent cinema) that fulfils the same function as the ellipsis (...) on the printed page, compelling the spectator to take stock and speculate over what is going to happen next.  (Truffaut would later adopt the same device as one of his signature motifs for his films.)

By contrast, those characters that are unambiguously on the side of the angels are framed and illuminated in a way that makes them appear as seraphic emblems of virtue.  This is especially true of Mrs Cooper (faultlessly played by silent era star Lilian Gish), the kind but eccentric old woman who makes a habit of adopting stray children.  By practising the teachings of the Gospels in her daily life instead of merely using scripture as a justification for personal bigotry and hatred, Mrs Cooper is the noble counterpoint to the hoards of over-pious hypocrites who are so easily taken in by Powell's feigned religious fanaticism.  She fulfils the role of Van Helsing in the Dracula story, not only protecting the innocents in her charge, but also driving the murderous fiend to extinction through an unbeatable mix of guts and virtue-guided sense.  The children's mother Willa (Shelley Winters at her most endearingly helpless) is also sympathetically presented, but her human failings (her naivety and intense need for amorous fulfilment) prevent her from falling foul of Powell's vile machinations.  For the scene in which Willa is brutally slain, her bed resembles an altar in a chapel, her head lit in such a way that she acquires the halo of a willing sacrifice.

Stylistically and thematically, The Night of the Hunter has many points of connection with Jean Renoir's Swamp Water (1941).  Both of these films are prime examples of Southern Gothic cinema and would influence subsequent films of the late 1950s, early 1960s set in the southern states of the US.  These include Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer (19569), Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind (1960), Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and, most noticeably, Robert Aldrich's Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).  Aldrich was one of a number of significant maverick filmmakers (others include Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese) to be immensely impacted by Laughton's film.  Aldrich's 1964 Southern Gothic offering (another good versus evil tussle) is peppered with references to Laughton's film, to such a degree that they could almost be mistaken for the work of the same director. Laughton's adept use of aerial photography has an unmistakeable Aldrichian feel to it.

One way to sum up the singular character of The Night of the Hunter is to see it as a high-speed collision of a noirish psycho-thriller and Disney-style children's adventure movie.  All of the familiar devices of classic film noir are brought into play to stress the first person point of view throughout, and with dizzying effect at the key dramatic moments.  The threat of extreme violence is felt constantly and feels particularly nasty as it is directed against the most innocent of subjects, vulnerable women and defenceless children.  What makes the film's realism so potent is its jarring interlacing with dreamlike expressionism and occasional bouts of cartoonish whimsy.  It is this uncertain, uncomfortable melding together of conflicting moods and feelings that makes The Night of the Hunter one of cinema's most authentic and fascinating explorations of child psychology. What it shows us is not the world as it is (from a rational adult's perspective), but as it is perceived by an under-developed mind, a place where dreams and reality live hand-in-hand.

Compare this with the coldly realist approach adopted by the 1991 TV movie adaptation of Grubb's novel (titled Night of the Hunter).  Directed by David Greene and starring an unbearably overwrought Richard Chamberlain this low-key, low budget thriller makes a bold attempt to bring the original novel up to date (whilst retaining most of the plot), but fails through a staggering lack of inspiration and flair on both the writing and directing fronts.  The result is a plodding, pedestrian and painfully prosaic mis-interpretation of Grubb's book, with not even the merest trace of the depth of understanding and creative flourishes that make Laughton's film such an outright masterpiece.

When the hard-edged realism of the 1955 film surrenders to pure lyricism the effect is both unnerving and intensely moving (and in this the film appears to owe a debt to both D.W. Griffith and Jean Renoir).  Is it an accident that the film's most shocking passage is also its most exquisitely beautiful?  In what feels like a savagely ironic nod to the famous mirage sequence in Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934), the unfortunate Willa is seen sitting serenely at the wheel of a car, submerged in water and clearly lifeless.  It is a moment of pure unadorned horror (echoed in the grim climax to Truffaut's best known film) and yet as the camera tracks gently across an underwater Garden of Eden you are simply stunned by the gentle poetry of the images.  For Willa it appears that this is the happiest ending she could have hoped for - she has found her paradise.

A sequence of comparable beauty comes not long afterwards, with the camera languorously following the down-river progress of a rowing boat carrying the two fleeing children.  There is a hauntingly idyllic, almost Biblical, quality to this flight to safety, the river offering a motherly protection to the fugitives as well as the prospect of escape to a happier and safer future.  The skiff is shot from the vantage point of the riverbank, with fauna dominating the foreground - first a spider's web (symbolising Powell's malignant influence), then an over-curious frog, later a turtle and a pair of docile rabbits.  It is as if we have been instantly transported from the claustrophobic confines of a Gothic horror film into the Elysian rural landscape of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, although the question remains: what awaits our two heroes when they reach their journey's end?  The threat of danger still lingers, even in the film's most exquisite bucolic interlude, and it comes as no surprise when the killer's recognisable silhouette suddenly appears on the horizon, a bird of prey that just can't give up the chase.  Powell's resemblance to the Terminator doesn't end there.  He even gets to say 'I'll be back', adding with a sepulchral undertone: '...when it's dark.'

The Night of the Hunter has tension, drama and horror in copious amounts, but it also has an abundance of humour.  Laughton's evident penchant for extreme contrasts (seen also in his screen performances) hits its apogee in the grimly anticipated scene in the cellar, in which Harry Powell is on the brink of carrying out his most damnable crime by doing away with John and Pearl.  With Mitchum at his most deranged and the set lighting at its most oppressive, this is by far the scariest and tensest scene in the film, and yet it ends in pure farce.  Outwitted by his diminutive victims, stumbling about the set like a poor man's Frankenstein monster (even imitating Boris Karloff at one point), Powell is reduced to the level of a Disney-style cartoon villain, and you can scarcely help laughing at his subsequent, equally inept attempts to gain the upper hand over the pesky kids as they constantly slip through his fingers, along with the hidden stash of banknotes.  The film switches from Psycho to Scooby-Doo in the twinkling of an eye, and does so with such blithe disregard for convention that you hardly see the join.

For Robert Mitchum this was unquestionably a career highpoint.  He was already a major star in Hollywood, having featured in a string of impressive film noir B-movies that include Jacques Tourneur's noir masterpiece Out of the Past (1946).  In his personal life, he was damaged goods, his reputation tainted after his arrest in 1948 for illegal possession of marijuana.  (The victim of a sting operation, the actor was convicted and had to endure a seven weeks' detention on a prison farm - it was another two years before he won his acquittal.)  Mitchum's highly publicised run-in with the law did little to harm his career, however, and he remained a favourite with the cinema-going public and filmmakers alike.  Charles Laughton considered him one of the world's greatest actors and he certainly makes the most of a performer whose style of acting was too subtle for most of the films he appeared in.  As the outwardly charming but inwardly demonic Harry Powell, Robert Mitchum turns in what is easily the greatest performance of his career - a chillingly authentic portrayal of the seductive con artist who conceals his sadistic psycho-sexual impulses beneath a perfectly constructed mask of implacable righteousness.

The flick-knife that suddenly appears in Powell's hand whenever his bestial nature asserts itself (and to great comic effect in one scene) is a constant reminder of not only the character's deadly potential, but also his dangerously repressed psychology - a repugnance for carnal indulgence that compels him to commit sins of the mortal rather than venial variety.  Mitchum's homicidal firebrand preacher has become one of the most powerful icons of 20th century cinema.  With the words LOVE and HATE imprinted on the knuckles of his right and left hands respectively, Harry Powell is the most vivid embodiment of the kind of self-serving Manichaean bombast that has wreaked so much harm on American society, and sadly continues to do so.
 
The fact that The Night of the Hunter was both a commercial and a critical failure was a tragedy on two counts.  First, it dissuaded Charles Laughton from ever directing another film - plans to adapt Norman Mailer's debut novel The Naked and the Dead were hastily abandoned in the wake of this terrible personal setback.  More importantly, it served as a deterrent for any other Hollywood filmmaker who had aspirations of departing from the staid conventions of the period.  Its impact on American cinema wasn't felt for another decade, with the arrival of a new breed of film director (exemplified by Robert Aldrich) that was keen to pick up the baton that Laughton had discarded.

It was in France, with the directors of the French New Wave, that The Night of the Hunter had its most immediate and decisive impact, helping to galvanise the most dramatic revolution in the history of French cinema.  The early films of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut are so visibly influenced by Laughton's cinematic oddity that they almost seem to have bolted from the same creative stable (albeit in somewhat different directions and with jockeys of wildly differing temperament).  Truffaut's fascination with the traumas of childhood was doubtless affected by the film, his own work chiming with Mrs Cooper's observation at the end of the film that 'It's a hard world for little things'.  To this day, Laughton's deeply unsettling fusion of psycho-thriller and children's fairytale still stands apart from just about every other film that has been made. The Night of the Hunter is a masterpiece of undiluted weirdness - and the more times you watch it the weirder it gets.

Film Synopsis

It is the Great Depression and for most ordinary Americans life is unbearably hard.  Desperation drives Ben Harper, a young father, to rob a bank, but in the attempt he kills two men.  He scarcely makes it back to his West Virginia home before the police show up and arrest him.  Before he is dragged off to prison, Ben has just enough time to conceal the ten thousand dollars he stole and wring a promise from his two pre-teen children, John and Pearl, never to reveal its whereabouts.  For the crimes of robbery and homicide Ben is condemned to death by hanging.  As he awaits his impending doom, the young father is harassed constantly by his intimidating cellmate, a bogus preacher named Harry Powell, to reveal the location of the stolen money.  Powell may claim to be a man of God, the kind that rails against the sins of the world with a manic zeal, but in truth he is a homicidal psychopath who robs the widows he murders to fulfil what he believes is his divine purpose.

Ben takes his secret to the grave, but this does not deter his tormentor.  Once released from prison, the self-proclaimed Reverend Powell makes straight for the Harper homestead and immediately sets about inveigling his way into the confidence of Ben's widow Willa and her god fearing neighbours.  The only person who sees through Powell is Ben's son John - everyone else regards him as a beacon of Christian righteousness.  Willa is easily goaded into marrying the excessively pious stranger, but it isn't long afterwards that she mysteriously disappears.  The Reverend gains the sympathy of an entire community when he reveals that Willa abandoned him and her children to pursue a life of debauchery in the city; in fact, he stabbed her to death and dumped her body in the river.

In his determination to find the stolen money, Powell becomes increasingly violent towards John and Pearl.  As their stepfather flies into a murderous rage one evening, the children run away and head down river in their father's skiff.  Not long afterwards, they are discovered by a no-nonsense old woman named Rachel Cooper, who takes it upon herself to offer a home for any stray children who come her way.  It isn't long before Harry Powell tracks Ben and Pearl to their new home.  Mrs Cooper isn't deceived by the stranger's ardent appeal to be reunited with his errant offspring and drives him away with a shotgun.  Powell has no intention of being scared off so easily.  That night, he makes a return to the Cooper homestead, his heart blazing with malignant intent...