Qt3 Movie Club 2.0 #11: Night Of The Hunter

I was up until about quarter to three watching this last night. I had never seen it, and I planed on only watching half, but then the murder of Winters happened and I had to keep watching. Seeing her in the river - wow.

It seems to be that it is a film about a psychopath made before hollywood made many films about psychopaths while at the same time it is a film about religion made before hollywood stopped making films about religion. It explores both of those themes quite well I thought.

I don’t know if I loved it, but it certainly made me think about it.

I see there are a few very old threads about this classic film, but the most discussion seems to be in this one, so this is the one I’ll bump. Also, every one of these threads has the title wrong. It’s got a “The” in front of it, dammit.

“The Night Of The Hunter” (Amazon video link) is definitely in my top 10 films of all time list. It has been years since I’ve seen it, and I do plan on seeing it again soon, but in the meantime, I ran across this very cool video someone put together on Youtube. It’s Charles Laughton (the director) reading the story of “The Night Of The Hunter”. It’s 34 minutes long, so it’s a condensed version, and was apparently released on album many years ago.

Someone took that audio, and edited it together with the corresponding scenes from the film, and I was surprised at how well it turned out.

So first of all, if you haven’t seen the film, I always recommend doing that.
But if have already seen it, or if you haven’t seen it but wondered about it, then this is a good summary. But again, since watching this will spoil the film, please watch the film first.

My personal experience with “The Night Of The Hunter” was between 10 and 20 years ago, when I was lying half-asleep on the sofa, watching TCM one evening. I had never heard of it. As the movie went on, I gradually, but pretty quickly, woke up fully, and got reeled in completely. I liken it to a form of hypnosis. There was a magical, surreal quality to it that I always find difficult to explain. And when it was over, all I could think was, “Wow. That was possibly the best movie I’ve ever seen”. The photography. The noir-ish elements. The story. And again, the photography. Simply brilliant, from beginning to end.