Apoorva Gaurav writes about Charles Laughton’s 1955 film The Night of the Hunter

There can be two approaches of looking at The Night of the Hunter one glass-half-full and another half-empty one. If one starts to praise all the summits first and only time director Charles Laughton achieves during the 93 minutes the review would become a course in film studies and similarly if one starts picking up all the cinematic errors and discrepancies in the film it would become a lesson in film making.

The film starts with a biblical verse and the verses keep coming again and again. But don’t mistake it for a devotional film, the verses have been used to create a mystic environment. John (Billy Chapin) and his sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) are two kids living in an idyllic village with their parents. One day while they were playing their father comes with a gun and 10,000 dollars, he hides the money and makes kid promise that they won’t reveal it to anyone. The police take him, he is charged for murder and gets capital punishment. The kids don’t reveal the secret to anyone but while in prison it gets slipped out from the father’s tongue to Harry Powell played by the charismatic Robert Mitchum.

In Powell Laughton creates one of the most sinister characters in cinematic history. He had all his knuckles tattooed; ‘HATE’ on the left hand, ‘LOVE’ on the right and is ready to tell the story of love vs. hate at the drop of a hat; but there is no doubt that he uses love as a weapon and is driven by hate and more importantly greed. He comes to the village disguised as Reverend Harry Powell and with the help of love vs. hate and other spiritual talks wins the heart of kids’ mother Willa Harper (Shelly Winters). They marry and soon the real agenda of Powell is revealed. What follows is a string of most loathsome atrocities committed by Powell to get the money and kids trying to escape from him.

The film has countless moments of shockingly marvelous cinematography. The scene in which Powell first comes to the house in the night and his shadow casts a sinister look or the one in which Powell kills Willa, or the one in which he follows John and Pearl to the basement or the one in which Willa is shown with her hair flowing with her car at the bottom of the river are pure gem. But my favourite is the one when the kids start off their journey on boat and a frog on the coast is sitting on the coast. The frog seems bigger and that so easily signifies the spirit of the moment. The film is the marks the high point of cinematographer Stanley Cortez’s career that boasts of films like The Magnificent Ambersons.

The film stands midway between a film noir and spiritual drama. The protagonist is corrupt to the soul but he manages to win people by speaking about religion seems to portray the film as a critique to religious propaganda but the fact that kids are rescued by a Bible fearing philanthropist lady underlines where the director’s faith lies.

Mitchum is the central character and he plays his role amazingly well. He is the perfect Reverent Harry Powell, harrowing voice cold facial expressions and burning eyes, he makes probably the best villain in black and white American films probably even better than Orson Welles in The Third Man. Billy and Sally are perfect as John and Pearl, the rest of the cast has also done pretty well.

Where the film lacks is in screenplay and character development. The plot is too thin and the screenplay not enough juicy. Film rather focuses on making individual scenes memorable instead of seamlessly integrating them.

The film is based on a novel with the same name by Davis Grubb which unlike the film grabbed great critical and commercial success. People say that the film lacks the sharpness of the novel, as I haven’t read the novel I can’t comment but this doesn’t seem unlikely.

Many biblical verses in the film seem to be having thrown forcefully without enough relevance to the plot. It’s true that they help in creating tension but don’t drive in the point like the one saying “By the fruit one can judge the tree”.

Overall a great cinematic experience; must watch for any film student or noir freak.

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