I have reached an age where I rarely want to rewatch films I have seen before. There are so many more films out there for me to see and discover that rewatching seems like a waste of time I could be spending on a first viewing. One of the reasons I chose the Stacker Top 100 list was because there were a large number of films on it I haven’t seen before, and a number of others I’ve never written up before. I still greatly enjoy my favorite films, the ones I have seen many times over, but I still somewhat wish I was seeing something new. However, I will be the first to admit I was legitimately looking forward to seeing The Night of the Hunter again. I think there’s a good chance, next time I revise my list of favorite films that The Night of the Hunter will be on it. I mean, I look over that review after my first viewing, and I was positively gushing over it.
It was also rife with embarrassing typos and spelling mistakes, meaning I probably didn’t have time to proofread it before it went live. I hate when that happens.
I will say, though, that I wondered at the time of my first review why director Charles Laughton never directed another film after this one. Laughton was, of course, better known as an actor, and he did a lot of theatrical direction, but Night of the Hunter was his only motion picture. I think I know why now: Night of the Hunter was a critical and box office disaster when it first came out in 1955. A critical reappraisal came later, obviously, and I can somewhat see why it was a bomb at the time. I mentioned that Laughton was a theater director, and this film has a very theatrical look to it. There are opening shots that look like they were taken from an airplane, and that couldn’t have been cheap, but likewise, there are sets that don’t look quite real. They’d be fine on a stage, but for a film, that must have been a wee bit revolutionary for mainstream audiences. This is a film that takes advantage of shadows and light, rooms that look like they were built with only three walls, and shots of wildlife that show the beauty of nature in ways that I doubt any studio film had done much of before and don’t really do much of now.
Take two shots in particular. First, there’s the discovery of the corpse of Willa Harper (Shelley Winters). Willa is the most recent in a long line of widows that were seduced and then murdered by the corrupt but charismatic Reverend Powell (the great Robert Mitchum). Powell had Willa in particular in mind when, while serving time for car theft, he met Willa’s husband Ben (Peter Graves). Ben had robbed a bank and then murdered his two partners, and as such, he’s due for a trip to the hangman’s noose. But before the police took him away, he managed to hide the $10,000 loot. But he didn’t tell his wife because he knew she had no common sense. As such, Ben entrusted the secret of the money’s hiding place to his son John (Billy Chaplin) and small daughter Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). And when Powell has had enough of the ignorant Willa, he murders her and dumps her body in a Model T that he then pushes into a river. How is the body discovered? In a gorgeous underwater shot with Winters’s hair floating above her head. At least, I assume it’s underwater. This is 1955. They had to do practical effects, so I am guessing Shelley Winters was good at holding her breath and looking dead underwater. But the way that Laughton framed it made it look more like a work of art than I am guessing was common in mainstream films.
Then there’s the shot of the children, on the run from Powell, and trying to spend the night in a barn as they drift downriver in their father’s old boat. Powell’s voice can be heard singing an old Gospel song from the sounds of things, prompting John to look out the barn door to see Powell, astride a stolen horse, in the form of a small silhouette on the horizon. Powell has turned into some kind of Bible verse-spouting Terminator by this point, unwilling to let the children or the money hidden in Pearl’s doll go. It’s a relentlessness that makes him an especially frightening foe, one who knows his Scripture well enough to charm most folks he meets even as he talks of disobedient children and how women are a temptation that should be avoided. His stature as a purported man of God combined with the fact that he is an adult means even people who know the children well are inclined to believe him over them, but that shot of the silhouette is, like the underwater corpse, one that I really wonder how they did in 1955.
Then there’s the other theatrical aspect of it: the directness. Theater as a medium can be subtle, but at the same time, it needs to be something that reaches the people in the back row as much as it does the folks in the front. Theater acting isn’t the same as acting for a camera. One can be subtle and quiet. The other has to reach the back row. Yes, modern microphones help, but body language and the like still needs to reach the back row. Regardless, Night of the Hunter opens with Lilian Gish’s Rachel Cooper, a poor pious woman who never met an orphaned child she didn’t turn away, giving a Scripture lesson to her children. All involved are mostly just heads on a star-filled background, and the message of the film is right there: you will know the truly good by the fruits of their labors. From there, the film cuts to some boys finding a dead woman in a basement, and then on to Reverend Powell, driving through the countryside and having a one-sided conversation with God, explaining how he has just succeeded in finding, marrying, and murdering another widow with some money, and God always seems to guide him to where he needs to be. He is then arrested in a burlesque house despite the fact he made it clear he believes women are just there to tempt men. And, as stated above, he’s arrested for car theft.
It’s somewhat interesting to see who falls for Powell’s holy man bit. The judge at his trial corrects him when he insists on the title of “preacher”. Ben Harper, his cellmate, seems to know he’s up to no good, but if he didn’t talk in his sleep, he might not have let on as much as he did. John doesn’t care for the man even as his kid sister and mother both find him absolutely charming, and only a slip of the tongue lets Powell know John is aware where the money is hidden. And when the two finally cross paths, Rachel sees right through Powell pretty much immediately. Everyone else? Well, that’s another story as many seem to see a charming man with a rather basic parable about the conflict between right-hand and left-hand, the one where Powell’s famous tattooed knuckles come into play, but Rachel is completely unimpressed. Oh, and she believes John when he tells her Powell isn’t his and Pearl’s father.
It’s also something that the film seems to end with a showdown between a crooked preacher and a poor old woman. Yes, many of Powell’s tricks get him close, but the simple fact is that a truly pious person just sees right through him and isn’t afraid to pull a shotgun on him. It’s only then that Powell’s whole scheme falls apart, and even when John can’t bring himself to testify against a man who threatened him–why does any preacher have a switchblade?–there’s still the threat of a lynch mob afterwards, made up of the townsfolk who were so enchanted by Powell when he first showed up in Willa Harper’s life. And for some reason, that also means Rachel and the children can keep that money.
Now, that said, there are a number of things here that seem like something I can’t say I have seen in many mainstream films, especially from the 50s. The hangman responsible for Ben’s execution has a scene with his family where he expresses regret over his job before looking in at his sleeping children. Why is that there? I don’t much care. It’s a nice scene. There’s a lot of suggestion of sex, one where an older woman seems to suggest her longtime husband isn’t good in bed, and then later when Powell lectures his new wife Willa about how sex isn’t for him unless there’s some procreation involved, and she doesn’t want more kids. That also sounds like the sort of conversation that Willa maybe should have had before she got remarried to a guy she just met. And there are some strong hints about poverty here. The film is set during the Great Depression by the looks of things, and there are a lot of poor children in this film. And while not all of them can find a Rachel Cooper, there is another, crankier woman handing out potatoes.
So, as much as I was glad to see this one again, I have to say: I really did enjoy this one as much as I did the first time. It’s definitely going on a revised “favorite films” list the next time I make one.
NEXT: Well, as much as I loved Night of the Hunter, I can’t say I much remember the next one. I thought I’d seen all of Hitchcock’s films, at least the ones he made with sound, but I don’t really recall much about 1946’s Notorious.
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