Re: The knife: Also notice how agitated Mitchum gets when Pearl touches it at the dinner table.
Well sheesh, He’s a sociopathic murderer not a pedophile.
Finished rewatching this.
I guess its easy to see why this was a commercial failure, in 1954. The mood swings between dark fantasy, fable and suspense with neck cracking speed. The first two thirds of the movie are tense suspence, the last third is completely different. Its view of society (via its representative Icey) is pretty bleak too. I think the difference between the first two thirds and the last third had to throw a few folks also. And, for a movie that opens with Bible parables being read to little children floating in space, it is a very mature sexual film. From Icey’s (“Icey” what a name, what a voice) castrating tales of married life, to Willa’s earthy lusts, to Rose’s infatuation with the Preacher, to the Preacher’s complicated relationship to his knife and God and Women. Pretty heady stuff for the Ward and June Cleaver set.
Mostly, the movie should be seen through John’s perspective. (That was Laughton’s intent) and from John’s perspective, this movie was no fun.
Starting with his father confronting him with childhood’s end and then getting roughly hauled off to jail before being hung. Then his mother’s abondonment (she refuses to believe when John tells her the truth about the Preacher, even if she shared some of the same misgivings…intiatlly) His anquish at the end when the Preacher gets roughly hauled off to jail isn’t for the Preacher, but pretty much for himself, having to re-live that experience. He tries to give the money back to get his father (and mother) back and undo the past.
Its John’s perspective that gives portions of the movie its fairytale aspects. Pwell breaking into song on the river and *Lillian Gish’s as fairy godmother specifically.
*At the end of WWI when Laughton was still in Paris, he saw a film starring a young Lillian Gish. To him she represented peace and safety (and as Callow notes, for a naescant(?) homosexual, a safe, sexless kind of beauty), this angelic version of Gish in Hunter probably carries a lot of those initial impressions.
I’m kind of jumping around, but the movie is so dense that it would be hard to dissect it effectively in the space of a message board posting (Books have been written, Documentaries have been filmed). But two of the most stiking shots were Willa’s bedroom and the cellar. In both cases the Preacher has his victims trapped. The stark black that surrounds those settings are visual representations of the evil helplessness that the Preacher brings with him. It may also show how The Preacher’s mind works, he believes God wants him to kill women rather than indulge his lusts. He may actually believe he is going to build a tabernacle with the money, he certainly doesn’t seem to actually need money. He is as trapped as they are.
As to the moments of comedy with the preacher - jars falling on his head, the weird noises he makes after Gish shoots him. During filming Gish said something to Laughton about how those sort of things undercut the Preacher’s evil, Laughton replied he didn’t want to ruin the rest of Mitchum’s career.
I noticed how crazy that shot is of Mitchum going into the cellar is when I rewatched it again - it reminds me of something out of Bosch, as if the house is a stand-in for the inside of Mitchum’s mind.
Awesome comments, BlueJackalope. I hope more people find some time to watch this because I’d love to read some more impressions.
If anyone is on the fence about this movie you really need to watch it.
We probably haven’t been very effective in conveying how much fun this movie is. Its full of very funny lines. Sometimes the humor is black but it is always there. And Mitchum’s performance is one for the ages.
If I believed in such lists I would say it is one of the 10 best American films ever made. There, I said it.
Lots of good bits, though I felt like the movie didn’t quite know how to end.
I found it very evocative of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, with their Southern mix of religion, bad people, sin as an opportunity for grace and grace as an opportunity for sin. The jacket on the DVD I got from Netflix described Mitchum’s character as a “bogus preacher,” but I don’t think that’s an apt description. He seems to actually believe in God and believe that he has a personal relationship with God. He’s just somehow able to reconcile that belief with the life of a serial killer. The scenes where Lillian Gish tells the children Bible stories seem cloying to modern viewers, but I don’t think it’s accidental that the children have run from religion’s dark, violent male aspect to its light, nurturing maternal side.
I actually sat on this disc in order to watch it a second time a week after my first time watching ever. I, as we all, loved the framing of the cellar and bedroom death scenes, honeymoon speechs and riverboat flights. It took me a while to think up something to add to the discussion but I think I found it, this movie celebrates responsibility in the face of adversity.
There are two kindered spirits who both fully assume responsibility for others in this film, John for Pearl and Lillian Gish (Mrs. Wilson?) with the stray children (and maybe a third, the prison guard, I felt he was kind of crowbared in). The story is chock full of adults people who simply go on autopilot when things get tough. Ben Harper says his family has money problems, so he places this incredible burden on his 7 year old son and go off the gallows. Icey Spoon says the widow needs a man and the first smooth talker fits the bill nicely. Bernie promises his help but can’t deliver due to the booze. Willa Harper even after hearing The Reverend threaten her children has put her trust in God as if she doesn’t have to worry about a thing.
Of course Mitchum’s character is able to get by for so long, all people needed to do was trust he was a preacher and keep his motivations hidden (more or less).
I believe this too. His character wasn’t putting on an act or else why stop and preach with the peach pickers? Why turn down the honeymoon nookie if he was really an out and out degenerate criminal? Why not torture the kids into telling him about the absconded funds the same night as Willa’s death?
And lastly to paraphrase the orignal post, Robert fucking Mitchum. I loved the just all the scenes were he was talking to the children about secrets. He goes from reasonable family man to bitchcakes in 0.0 seconds. Those are the scenes I think I’ll remember most.
Thanks for the pick.
I liked the line at the end of the movie where they talk about children, and how they are forced to accept their lot in life, no matter how terrible it might be. All they can do is endure.
The theme of helpless children was very strong in this movie, with plenty of references to street-children and other runaways.
Something that I only realized on this last viewing was how Ben Harper steals the money because he didn’t want his children to be like those hobo children, wandering the Depression landscape looking for something to eat. Which, ironically, is exactly what happens to them.
What a great line, highlight of the amount of repression simmering and bubbling away in many of the characters. And of course when Willa gets rebuffed, she lunges into religious fervor.
Also noted a lot of pointers and hints at past traumas and sufferings from many of the minor side characters. The guard’s mine explosion, Uncle Drunkie’s in-his-cups talking to his photo, right down to the other orphans instantly shouting out hiding spots (“the broom closet!” “under the porch!”) mid-Herod-story. Softer touches that were all the more puzzling in contrast to the ham-handedness of closing shots of Lillian Gish slowly repeating the moral into the camera, multiple times in case the audience missed it.
To badly sum up reaction: very uneven, but with great bits.
I’m right in line, the movie felt like it came from a later era. Some of the more jangly bits were as surreal as anything from the 60’s. I nearly expected that it would be a period piece shot much later in black and white for effect, it seems to be way ahead of most movies of that period as far as self-awareness and boundry-pushing.
Disturbing, I guess. Very good but downright odd.
H.
I read the Ebert review that was posted earlier and was struck by the word “timeless”. It does seem like a timeless movie. The fairytale aspects crashing into the serial killer / mature sexuality unhinge this from the era it was filmed in (the 50’s) and the era it was set in (the 30’s).
As to the Preacher’s faith. He fully believes he does have a personal relationship with God. One in which the Lord wants him to kill women.
Willa seals her fate when she prays and asks for the Preacher’s help in to make her clean. The Preacher looks up and you can almost hear the conversation going on in his head.
That might explain why he reacts so poorly to being shot at by Lillian Gish, she (in this movie) is someone who actually does have a relationship to God. Probably pretty scary to Powell’s skewed worldview.
As a side note, Gish is the only responsible adult in the whole movie and the only one who stands up to the preacher for the children.
Interesting movie. Lot’s of gorgeous stuff, but on some level it just doesn’t work. The tone veers so wildly it’s often off putting
But it doesn’t matter much, does it? Mitchum is flat-out amazing in this picture, and there’s just a stack of awesome scenes…
The Twilight Zone would start up four years later (1959), and you can really see the influence this movie had on that. Imagine the opening with the theme music playing… But Serling was smart enough to use the abstractions to intensify his story. It’s hard to tell what Lawton had in mind here.
Still, a great picture, and one that I’ll be thinking about for a while. Thanks for choosing it.
There is some unevenness to it.
The ending doesn’t satisfy - John bravely denouncing the Preacher in court instead of meekly looking away would have been the way a traditional movie would have gone. But, like Oedipus tearing his eyes out, it’s John refusing to participate any longer in the fate that the Gods have cast him too. The Preacher’s end is pretty meek as well, being quietly hustled out the back of the police station. A more satisfying ending would have let Mitchum chew some more scenery.
But, there is that stack of amazing scenes, and great, if sort of odd performances - Mitchum, Winters and the woman that plays Icey, and even Pwell - that makes the movie stick in the mind. I hope everyone who hasn’t already, watches this again at some point.
The general meekness of the ending was part of the point, I think–relating right to Gish’s character being the only adult who actually takes responsibility for the kids. There’s all this murder and danger and menace, but the darkness just blows away like anticlimactic smoke, or bad dream, the instant someone actually stands up to responsibly protect the weak. Just what the opening hymn was about, too.
That’s an interesting example. I just don’t understand the character’s motivations in the last act. It’s not that you can’t have a movie where one of the main characters act the way he does, it just seems seems odd that he shows up in this movie. Even as the film amps up the spiritual rhetoric with Gish’s character, John seems headed off into an existentialist universe.
The Preacher’s end is pretty meek as well, being quietly hustled out the back of the police station. A more satisfying ending would have let Mitchum chew some more scenery.
What makes that doubly strange is all the set-up with the lynch mob. I really didn’t understand the whole scene where Rachel grabs the kids and starts running. What is she running from/to? Especially since they head out of the back, then end up in front of the mob.
And after all that the mob literally goes nowhere…
I feel that the main point of the lynch mob is to show how the people who were originally most willing to be taken in by Powell’s snake-oil charms were now the ones calling the loudest for his blood.
And just as in their eagerness to buy into the snake oil (Icey–heh–was clearly having vicarious “quivering with cleanness” envy reasons when she was the big booster initially), their eagerness for blood likewise had nothing to do with being responsible for the weak. The mob fizzling nowhere was similar meekness reasons–just a couple cops being responsible and just, and it was all so much smoke that blew away.
Running the kids this way and that as the mob formed was definitely an odd bit, though. Not so much the initial hustling of them offscreen, but continuing on after that was weird.
I was finally able to get this one and watch it this weekend.
Robert Mitchum did a bang-up job on this one, and who knew he had such a nice singing voice?
The thing that struck me about this movie was what an amazing cast of failures populated the whole movie. The father, trying to secure his children’s future at an unconscionable cost. The son, ultimately failing his father even as he stood on the brink of getting away with the cash. Mitchum’s “preacher,” perfectly diabolical because he so clearly demonstrated absolutely no sense that he was doing anything but the Lord’s work, and ultimately completely failing to do anything the rest of us would consider anything the Lord desired. The mother, foolish and weak. Mrs. Spoon, narrow-mindedly sending the whole family to it’s doom based on the most shallow of observances. Even the rescuing older lady, her own son alienated from her by her harshness.
In the end, you have the sense that maybe there was a tiny victory to be had here after all. The children had found a stable home with a woman who did care for them enough to risk her life. The woman, who had maybe seen her redemption in caring for the cast-off children. A warm home, good food, and a happy Christmas. I can’t quite see this as a Christmas movie–the overtones are far too dark. But as an examination of the tiny triumphs we can achieve despite a multitude of failure and pain, it stood out a bit.
Good pick!
After waiting nearly 3 weeks for a new bulb for my projector, I finally got to watch this.
I was very suprised at how much I liked it. The black and white photography was stunning, it really helped capture the night scenes.
The opening sequence of the bible story with disembodied heads set the tone from the get-go that this was going to be a little wacko and I wasn’t disappointed.
Knowing that the wolf in sheep’s clothing was descending upon the town/family from the start illustrated how he was so manipulative that so few recognized him for what he was: a gold digger. I found it funny when Icey Spoon was talking about men at the picnic and she said something to the affect “I lay in bed next to my man and all I can think of is my canning” and the look of her husband said it all. LOL.
Robert Mitchum’s voice was very Johnny Cash in it’s droll delivery and was really mesmerizing. In the ending, when he’s scerenading the lady, she almost succombs as she begins to sing along with him until the spell is broken.
The ending was surprising for what didn’t happen. We never got to see what happens to Harry. The last we see he is whisked away to safety from the mob.
Shelly Winters as the Willa Harper (is that a play on Widow?) changed my world view, as I always had her pictured as her role in Posiedon Adventure. You can begin to see how big she would become when she’s standing in that nightgown before the mirror.
Good pick!