The Night of the Hunter

Charles Laughton’s sole work as director is an accomplished, beautifully made, impeccably acted, and perhaps a bit too thin thriller, the announcement of a new talent behind the camera. And the reaction was muted contemporaneously. It was either the negative critical reaction or Laughton’s simple preference for directing theater over film, but The Night of the Hunter marked the sole, enticing work behind the camera of Laughton who could have gone on to make several more films, giving us a legacy in film of him beyond his performances in films like Witness for the Prosecution. As it stands, though, if you are going to have only one movie to your name, you could do far, far worse than The Night of the Hunter.

The story follows the deranged preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) who goes from town to town, killing women because he considers the frilly and lacey nature of modern women to be a blight upon God’s creation. He’s thrown in jail for stealing a car at the same time that Ben Harper (Peter Graves) is thrown in prison with a death sentence for killing two people while stealing $10,000 that he hid with his children, John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), without the knowledge of their mother Willa (Shelley Winters) because she’s too trusting. Harry gets a hint of the money’s location through Ben’s sleep-talking, realizing that the children know. Harry becomes monomaniacal in the pursuit of the money, finding the newly widowed woman, playing up his charm, and marrying her in quick time, all while Pearl falls in love with him and John mistrusts him.

The meat of the film is all about danger, this deranged preacher man using his outward position as both a man of God and the new father to these children to commit and threaten violence in pursuit of the universal MacGuffin: a handful of cash. That sense of danger is palpable because of how in control Laughton was in terms of every aspect of the production. Firstly are the performances. The standout showstopper is Mitchum who balances between charming and viciously dangerous with ease. Considering the supposedly true stories of his deep drunkenness the deeper into production he got, that’s kind of amazing and a testament to Mitchem as well as Laughton.

The supporting cast has their own great moments as well, the early parts dominated by Winters’ combination of wounded, expectant, and pious that makes her sympathetic and pathetic all at once, the exact sort of woman who would fall for a slick operator like Powell. That latter half is dominated by the silent film star Lillian Gish who appears as a kindly old woman who takes in wayward children cast out during the Depression, who adds John and Pearl to her brood after the two escape from Powell’s murderous ways.

Where the film works surprisingly well (only because Laughton was an actor, really) is how gorgeous the film looks from beginning to end. It’s rarely realistic, those moments relegated to scenes outside during the day, and there’s a heavy use of shadow from the DP Stanley Cortez that takes a full step into German Expressionism, especially the moment that Powell reveals his true nature to Willa, complete with exaggerated arm movements. The action moves outside after Powell becomes too big of a threat, and the river gets filmed on a sound stage primarily at night, creating that artistic look of night where every major figure in the distance is backlit by some major source of light, causing outlines in the dark rather than needing to rely on heavily filtered brightly lit scenes.

I suppose one reason I’m held back in appreciation slightly is that good wins. It doesn’t feel right for the story, especially after Powell escapes from a lynch mob and disappears from the story completely. There’s a happy note at the end, unalloyed by any other emotion, and it doesn’t quite seem to fit the rest of the film. The book ends definitively with Powell dying at the hands of the lynch mob, but the movie has him get away, and then we have a happy ending. It just doesn’t quite fit. Plus, there doesn’t seem to be much of a point by the end except the thrills of the chase we’ve had, and when we have this happy ending, it seems incongruous with what came before.

Still, that’s a minor concern. It’s a beautifully shot, well-acted, and thrilling ride through the American midwestern countryside. That it was poorly received at the time is not the biggest of surprises. It’s all about children in danger and is overwhelmingly meanspirited for much of its runtime, but it’s also such a good thrill ride as it goes.

I do wish Laughton had directed more. He showed real promise.

Rating: 3.5/4