The Night of the Hunter has had a rollercoaster of an existence. The film was hated on its original release, and the conversation surrounding it was so abysmal, that it’s director, Charles Laughton (an actor known for his roles in Mutiny on the Bounty and Witness for the Prosecution) never made another film. Since then, the film has been reevaluated significantly, and is now considered one of the greatest films of all time from most critics and filmmakers. It has inspired filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Spike Lee (if you remember, he references The Night of the Hunter in Do the Right Thing), Guillermo del Toro and Robert Altman. It is overwhelmingly considered a masterpiece and it’s a shame that Laughton never got to experience its success in his lifetime. He only lived seven more years after its release.

Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) is a traveling preacher who marries lonely widows and then kills them for their fortunes. While in prison, Powell shares a cell with Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who reveals that he was arrested for a big bank robbery and that he left the money with his wife, Willa (Shelley Winters). Powell is released and Ben Harper is sent to hang, so Powell travels to see Willa, wooing her and the entire town with his charm and demonstration of the continuous war between “love” and “hate”. John, Willa’s eldest child, remains skeptical of Powell, and refuses to tell him where the money is when Willa’s not around. Powell becomes increasingly erratic, and so John and his little sister, Pearl, steal away in the middle of the night to escape, but Powell is on their trail, stalking them like, well, a hunter, intimidatingly singing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” to make his presence known, and he won’t stop without getting what he wants.

The visuals of the film are striking in their use of shadow and straight edges. It’s very much influenced by the art of German Expressionism, which took the norm and made it rigidly abstract. Think this painting:

The art movement bled into filmmaking during the silent years for backdrops and aesthetic. Most famously in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but also seen in films such as The Golem, Destiny, Nosferatu and Metropolis, German Expressionism even crept into American films, such as the early Universal Horror films like Dracula, thanks to the cinematographers that came from Germany to escape persecution and Nazism. Most noir films reference German Expressionism in their look and use of shadow, and even today, the works of Tim Burton are a return to that look of early Expressionism. The Night of the Hunter, too, uses this art technique to great effect. Below are two images, the first of a shot from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the second from The Night of the Hunter for comparison.

As a director, Laughton was supportive and open to input from his actors. Being an actor himself, he was better at knowing what they needed for a good performance and was accommodating. He was also significantly worried about his time and budget and refused to cut in between takes, instead directing his actors and if they did not give him what he wanted, he would demand they do it again with the cameras still rolling. This was a method that by 1955 had all but been done away with. It was more a method during the days of silent films. Interestingly enough, Laughton’s goal with The Night of the Hunter was to return to the feel of silent cinema, and bemoaned the more current nature of the film-going audience of relaxing in your seat with popcorn. He wanted to, in his own words, “make people sit up again”.

To add to the aura of silent films, Laughton cast silent film star, Lillian Gish, as Rachel Cooper, an old woman who takes care of orphan children and who takes John and Pearl in as they attempt to escape Harry Powell. Lillian Gish was called “The First Lady of American Cinema” for her work as the strong, beautiful heroines in the films of D.W. Griffith, including The Birth of a Nation (considered the most racist film of all time), Intolerance (Griffith’s attempt to say, “Nuh uh, I’m not racist.”), Broken Blossoms (also called The Yellow Man and the Girl, so you can see how well that “not racist” thing worked out) and Way Down East (this one’s okay). Gish’s role as Rachel Cooper is one of the highlights of the film. Once he discovers where they are, Harry Powell attempts to charm Rachel to get John and Pearl back. However, she is not ensnared by the gleam in his eye and forbids him from coming to get them. In perhaps the greatest scene in the film, Powell stands outside the house and sings “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”. Rachel, unintimidated, sits on the porch, rifle in her lap, and joins him in a duet.

Bonus Review: Gaslight

After her famous opera-singing aunt is murdered, Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) inherits her estate and follows in her footsteps. She falls in love and quickly marries her accompanist, Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), and they move into the estate. Soon after, Paula finds a letter addressed to her late aunt from a Sergis Bauer and encounters several strange incidents – there are haunting noises coming from the attic and the gaslights outside of the house seem to dim and brighten. Gregory convinces Paula that it’s all in her imagination and that she’s a kleptomaniac. However, when Inspector Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotten) starts snooping around, he helps Paula discover that, not only is she not crazy, but her husband might be gaslighting her.

Yes, it’s true. This is where that term comes from. If you’re gaslighting someone, you are the Charles Boyer to their Ingrid Bergman. Gaslight is a beautiful piece of London gothic in film that harkens back to the novels of the Bronte sisters and such, as well as sits among its contemporaries of 1940s thrillers that seemingly fall under the same category: Don’t Trust Your Husband! Movies like Rebecca, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Jane Eyre, Dragonwyck, Notorious and The Spiral Staircase that were all released within six years’ time. It’s interesting the trends you can find in cinema. Bergman gained a lot of attention for her role as Paula, garnering several awards for the film (more for this film than even Casablanca), and it is also the film debut of Angela Lansbury. That’s right, Jessica Fletcher was a maid in her early days before becoming an novelist and amateur detective!