From the moment this movie club idea started, there was only really one choice in my head: Night Of The Hunter. (And before you ask, it’s on Netflix, and you can buy it from Amazon, and you lucky Americans can stream it for free from Hulu. (Thanks, Talisker!))
Why Night Of The Hunter? Because it’s a crazy, crazy movie. The basic story is pretty simple - preacher comes to a small town to try and locate some money that his former prison cellmate had told him he had hidden somewhere - but director Charles Laughton shoots it in a wild mix of film noir, Southern gothic, German expressionism and magical realism. The tone veers all over the place, sometimes even within the same scene, but there’s an excitement behind the camera that’s infectious, as if Charles Laughton knew he was never going to make another movie so he throws in every idea he can think of.
I’m trying not to go into too many specifics, because if you haven’t seen Night Of The Hunter it’s a movie that is greatly improved by not knowing anything about it. But the other thing that makes this movie great - and in my opinion, it really is great, easily in my top ten American films of all time list - is Robert fucking Mitchum. Mitchum was always the epitome of cool to me, a symbol of the kind of laconic masculinity I could never hope to achieve, so watching him twist that screen persona into something so twisted and perverted is shocking, sort of like watching Henry Fonda be the evil bad-ass in Once Upon A Time In The West.
Anyway, there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to Night Of The Hunter, so get watching. Film fans will find echoes of this movie all the way through pop culture, from Spike Lee ripping off the infamous love/hate speech whole cloth for Do The Right Thing, to the obvious stylistic influences on everybody from David Lynch to the Coen Brothers to Stephen King. If you’ve never seen it before, you’re in for one hell of a treat.
Night of the Hunter totally didn’t work for me when I saw it in college. We had it screened in a class where the cinematographer, Stanley Cortez, came to speak about it. He talked about some of the forced-perspective techniques they used, such as having a little person on a pony stand in for a rider on horseback. The guy was in his 80’s (he’s since passed on), and he came across as somewhat crotchety and absent-minded. Before the screening the teacher had expressed what a great, classic movie this was, and how it was too bad that Charles Laughton’s directorial career never came to anything more. The movie left me totally cold and in the afterward Q&A with Cortez, I was biting my tongue not to laugh.
I really don’t know why the movie so utterly failed to work for me. Maybe I just wasn’t expecting something so strange and dreamlike; I had, perhaps, forgotten to take off my armor of sarcastic know-it-all-ness when I watched it. I found Mitchum’s performance to be over-the-top and mannered, Lillian Gish’s quasi-Biblical nuggets of wisdom to be annoying, and the angelic moppets she protects insufferable. It felt to me like a similar storyline to Cape Fear (which would be made a few years later, also with Mitchum), but done in a much more pretentious and precious way compared to Cape Fear’s trashy hard-boiled B-movie style.
It’s extremely rare, in fact, that an acknowledged classic has bounced off me so completely. But I’m aware I’m very much in the minority on this, so it might be interesting to revisit it now that 15 years have passed. Maybe I just wasn’t able at the time to absorb it on the wavelength that Laughton and co. intended. I will say that the cinematography is deservedly acclaimed; visually, it’s a beautiful film.
I can totally see Night Of The Hunter as a love-it-or-hate-it kind of movie. As I mentioned, the tone is all over the place - remember the bit of slapstick at the end of the scene where Powell is hunting for the children* in the creepy basement? But that’s precisely why I like it.
I also have a fondness for movies about childhood (as opposed to children’s movies, if you catch my meaning) - Leolo, My Life As A Dog, the opening act to Once Upon A Time In America, etc. Night Of The Hunter captures peculiar, specific emotions I associate with childhood in a way that very few other movies have done.
As my final defense of this choice (not that it needs defending, or that you were attacking it, but you know what I mean): Given the choice between a movie that is modest but good and one that is uneven but goes-for-broke, I pick uneven every time. It’s the reason I’ve watched Apocalypse Now more than The Conversation, or Fellini more than Bergman, or Gilliam more than Spielberg. Sure, Night Of The Hunter can be pretentious, and yes the kids (well, the daughter, mostly) are pretty annoying. But it also weird and wonderful and creepy. There are at least a half-dozen scenes that are in my opinion unforgettable, like the dreamlike midnight escape down the river, or that incredible shot of poor Shelley Winters’ fate, that you won’t see in any other movie of the time and precious few movies now.
I’d be really curious to hear what you think of it on a second viewing, Gordon.
Sounds pretty interesting, as does the book it was based on.
BTW, have I seen this plot somewhere else? Has it been used in some TV show or something? Or am I just getting confused with Reindeer Games or something?
I’ve always thought this is intentional. There is that over-the-top quality to everything in this film. Some notable examples being the Lynch mob, the elderly couple What-was-their-name, the old lady What-was-her-name, plus the short-term characters motivation and whatnot. And, generally, there is that theater-like reciting and overacting the dialog.
Some very cool scenes, though. And the whole thing is kinda exciting with its strangeness.
I saw this at 15 or 16 because it’s on Stephen Kings top 100 horror must see list in Danse Macabre and it really made an impression.
This one I’ll have to hunt down and watch again to see how it holds up. Good pick.
I find it helps to think of Night Of The Hunter as a fable; the theatricality of the performances and the awesome use of in-studio spaces to evoke mood work to heighten that effect. My wife and I watched it again last night, and the middle part of the film where the kids are on the run are extremely evocative of storybook illustrations. (I love how Laughton frames the children on the river against these oddly large animals in the foreground - referencing Aesop, perhaps? It’s as if the animals are protecting the children as they escape, underscoring how Powell is a self-avowed enemy of the natural.) It’s all part of the film’s Southern Gothic take on expressionism.
What a weird movie – I don’t mean that in a bad way necessarily, but, um, huh. What was the general reaction to this when it came out?
There were definitely some strikingly cool bits (as mentioned above); there’s a fair amount of odd stuff, too, like the way he runs leaping and screeching into the barn after he’s shot.
Will have to chew on this a bit further – just finished watching it with my father-in-law who’s up for thanksgiving, and I have a few beers in me, so I’m not in the best position to make cogent remarks :)
The general reaction was one of widespread public loathing. Night Of The Hunter was notorious flop upon release, guaranteeing that Charles Laughton would never be allowed to direct another movie. It picked up a solid cult audience due to some high-profile fans like Stephen King, who I assume had it on a constant loop in the background while he was writing The Stand.
Thinking about it again this morning, I’m more intrigued by the movie than I was last night. Planning to give it another viewing on Friday when the relatives have all gone home – now that I know the overall shape of the movie, I expect I’ll be able to pick up and digest a lot more of the details.
There aren’t very many movies that I want to turn around and watch again this quickly, so that’s cool :)
Growing up I really only saw Shelly Winters as an honored guest on the talk show circuit (Carson, Griffin, etc) so I did not know how good of an actress she was or why she was on the talk show circuit beyond the fact that she roomed with some very attractive women and was quite the manhunter herself.
Films like Night of the Hunter help me to understand a little more about her career. She wasn’t the best actress; and while she was beautiful, I can see her being overshadowed by her contemporaries because she wasn’t a stunning beauty.
Memorable scenes:
Her last scene in Night of the Hunter
The bride and groom in the bedroom scene
Mitchum did a great job moving from loosey-goosey crazy (early jail scenes) to manipulator (man of the cloth scenes) and back to unhinged (getting chased off scene).
God… this movie is so beautifully shot. The Murder scene in the bedroom… the wide angle with Mitchum grasping in the air, and her tight on the bed… The scene where the children are floating down the river in the boat against the starry sky… heck… any of the shots involving the river.
One scene that hasn’t been mentioned, in particular, was the scene between Jon and Mrs. Cooper. When she asks him again about his parents… how he slowly moves his hand to hers, unable to trust anyone else… he opens up to her.
That being said… the movie is plagued by 50s weirdness and some odd acting and filming techniques. The scene in the basement where they trap Mitchum in the basement is just out of place… There are numerous odd screen wipes used, and some of the classic cuts to people just about to react to something. (That older movies are so full of)
Started re-watching this last night on Hulu, but didn’t get a chance to finish, But I’d conservatively guess I’ve seen this 10 times anyway. I used to own an copy on VHS and I used to like watching this when I had some of what madkevin would call “medicine” around. And I used to like “medicine” quite a bit. I also would pop it in anytime I met anyone who said they had never seen it.
I liked this enough that I started tracking down Laughton films to watch, and eventually ended up with a copy of Simon Callow’s biography of him. I re-read the section on Hunter last night. (Poking around the Internets I see that there was a documentary and a couple of books put out about Hunter. I will track them down.
A few notes from that - James Agee is credited for the screenplay, he was drinking himself to death when he wrote the 350 page version he turned in to Laughton. Laughton rewrote it and its Laughton’s version that appears in Agee’s Five Screenplays Book (a great book for film buffs btw that includes The African Queen).
Supposedly Laughton hated the children*, especially the little girl. The little boy was directed by Mitchum and who knows who directed Peewll (probably Mitchum).
*Sounds like some outtakes form the above documentary disprove this, though even if he did direct them, doesn’t mean he liked them.
Fitting that this was the only film directed by Laughton, he poured everthing into it and while it might seem on the surface to be a simple dark fairy tale it has an incredible amount of density, both visually and story wise. That it was a commercial and to a lesser extent critical failure crushed Laughton. It wasn’t that he wasn’t given a chance to direct again. In fact, his producer secured the rights to The Naked and the Dead and Laughton and Mailer spent 6 months working on a screenplay, but Laughton’s heart wasn’t in it and the project eventually moved on. I really would have liked to have seen Laughton’s The Naked and the Dead.
I’ll say a bit more about the film after I finish rewatching it, but I always notice something new every time I watch it (Its the Sonic Youth’s Sister of film) and this time it was Mitchum’s knife. It first appears by stabbing through the preacher’s pants leg at a burlesque show (Its his dick! Get it? His dick!) and is held between Powell’s praying hands in prison. Later, on her wedding night Willa discovers the knife in the preacher’s coat. She holds it and then smiles “Men…” and puts it back affectionately. That was when she still thought she was going to get laid. (Winters was great in this role, it was easy to see she had a lot of sensuality to repress.)
