The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Charles Laughton
"It's a hard world for little things..."
I love the disembodied space head imparting sound biblical wisdom to the disembodied heads of the space children. They're almost heavenly, which seems appropriate as the film transitions to some earth-bound children playing hide and seek and finding the body of a young girl in a cellar.
The musical cue as Mitchum's Powell is introduced tells us everything we need to know about him. My wife said at the end of the movie that she was glad that it wasn't a story about us discovering that Powell is evil. The movie shows us right away that this guy is bad, but is pretending to be good, and is clearly insane.
The conversations and relationships that people have with God in this movie are amazing, and is something that I've always found interesting in real life. For me, it's always been hard to differentiate between the earnest prayers of godly people and the meandering direct conversations with the divine that we hospitalize people for having. I think Charles Laughton is fascinated by this as well, because the film places the madman in a field of virtuous characters, and they all seem to be speaking the same language.
I'd imagine that during the Great Depression, sleepy rural towns like the one in the film, would become more drastic with their faith. Or they would turn to vice. The clearest thinker in the film, an old man John calls Uncle Birdy who says he has no time for preachers, is rendered feckless by drink and cowardice. Children become lost in a fractured society, and numerous characters remark on the number of wandering, parentless children who travel up and down the river looking for food and protection. The adults don't sound like they pity these children, they just sound angry with their parents for not doing their jobs.
There are a lot of opinions flying around. Mrs. Spoon, the wife of the town's candy shop owner speaks openly and brashly about what Willa, John and Pearl's now widowed mother, should or should not do. She gives a long and loud lesson at a picnic about how sex is a necessity of procreation, and that having sexual feelings is impure and improper (but only for women). Later in the film, though, she clucks her tongue when Powell tells her that Willa turned down his advances on their wedding night. In Mrs. Spoon's righteous world, women should give in to every advance their husband makes, but should derive no pleasure from the act at all.
(This sounds so unchanged from today's rural America. I chuckled out loud when Mr. Spoon called Mrs. Spoon, "mother" on multiple occasions. It might not have been as weird in 1955, but the way the film is crafted, the absurdity of it is not lost on Laughton.)
In reality, Powell is the one who rebukes his new wife's advances, telling her that he will never have sex with her, because they do not want to procreate. He denies Willa coldly, and admonishes her for having sexual feelings.
Powell definitely has a weird, understated thing with sex. At the beginning of the film, he hears God saying that He hates "perfume smellin' things, lacy things, things with curly hair" but still ends up at a strip show, where he angrily draws his knife. He thinks about killing the girl on stage, but reminds himself that there are too many other people around. "Can't kill the whole world," he sighs.
Powell is unhinged, and has replaced sex with murder. He won't, or perhaps more accurately can't, have sex, so he uses his knife. He even shows it to young Pearl in one memorable scene, and becomes excited and agitated when she goes to touch it. Super creepy stuff.
The bedroom scene between Powell and his new wife was one of the most striking shots I've seen in a long time:
The preacher is in his church, which is also his marital bedroom. He's raising his left hand to the sky (the hand with HATE written on it) as his wife reveals that she heard Powell violently trying to get the location of the $10,000 from the children. She's not angry, however; not even after Powell slaps her across the face. She sounds sleepy and blunted. Her only request is that he teach her The Way, how to be clean and pure with God just as Powell clearly is.
Willa is changed after meeting Powell. She becomes obsessed with cleanliness, appearing unhinged and manic while discussing how clean she is or could be. After she is turned down and shamed on her wedding night, the next scene shows her as wide-eyed and frantic in her devotion to God and her husband's church. My wife and I both agreed, she was horny af and hated herself for it.
While adult sexuality is a big theme in Night of the Hunter, predatory sex against children is the more insidious and shadowy theme. The children in this film are almost glowingly cherubic or piteously disheveled, but always innocent. The one child in the film whose innocence is damaged first is John: his father the bank robber tells him to keep a secret from everybody, even other trusted adults. This secret is about the location of the hidden money, but c'mon...what's the most common secret that adults make vulnerable children keep?
It's never explicitly stated that Powell is preying on the children sexually, but the genius of Laughton's direction puts it just under the surface. He knows that something as simple as a door closing and locking can be the most terrifying thing for a child.
There's also a scene later in the film when Powell is manipulating a young teenage girl for information. She doesn't fear him, and seems to crave the attention. He buys her ice cream, and she hangs all over him, asking if she's beautiful. She's another wastrel, forgotten by a destitute society. The road is cruel to lost children, and she's found a reliable way to get positive attention and rewards. Again, it's never explicitly stated, but the subtext is chilling and oh so upsetting.
In the 3rd act, the children escape from Powell by taking a small boat down a river. All the shots of the children along the river are framed with small woodland creatures. I didn't really understand it during the film, but I kind of get it now: they're all the little innocent things of nature, and they're all completely exposed to the cruelty of the bigger, stronger, and faster predators.
Watch how scary this is:
The children eventually find refuge with a kindly old woman, Mrs. Cooper, who takes them in and cares for them. She teaches them lessons and understands the trauma that they've gone through, even if she doesn't know the specifics.
There's a scene where the children are inside Mrs. Cooper's house hiding from Powell who is sitting outside on a stump singing hymns. She sits with a shotgun at the ready to defend her young charges. A poignant moment unfolds before her:
Mrs. Cooper is the first character in the film to understand the plight of children in a broken world. Their parents either ignored them or abandoned them. They asked them to keep secrets, or failed to protect them, blinded by their own desires and needs. Mrs. Cooper is the only shepherd they have now.
The ending is beautifully bizarre in a way that I feel David Lynch would appreciate. In fact, you can tell that Lynch learned a lot from watching how Laughton handled such a dark and disturbing film with subtlety and by highlighting the absurdity and terror of everyday life. Watching Night of the Hunter has only increased my appreciation of something like Eraserhead or Twin Peaks.
There's also a lot of silent film film influence here. Some scenes are framed like stage plays, where the whole set is flatly presented to the audience as a cross-section; almost like we're watching ants in an ant farm.
You can also see the impact that Weimar German films, particularly M, left on Laughton. M is another dark film, although more explicitly so, about a child murderer as a symptom of a fractured society.
And yes, the LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos are exactly what inspired this:
The most incredible thing: this was Laughton's first and only film as a director! He'd done a ton of acting work, dating back to the silent era, but this was his only time behind the camera.
I feel eventually I'm going to get to a film that won't keep me up late typing my thoughts out, but luckily today is not that day.
The Night of the Hunter is one of the most quietly terrifying films I've ever seen. Robert Mitchum's ability to convey subtle insanity couched in disarming charm makes him a perfect predator. Laughton's direction and cinematography presents a surrealistic and absurd rural America where fear and trauma are a silent part of everyday life. I can't recommend it enough, and I feel like my understanding of film has changed in a strange and beautiful way.
Go watch it!
Children abide. This is the constant refrain of the 3rd act of Night of the Hunter. Children will accept the rules that their parents and that society will put on them, both good and bad. It's a film about predators, prey, belief, innocence, and fear...but mostly it's a story about children.
The story of Night of the Hunter is simple enough. Robert Mitchum plays a serial killer preacher, with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles, traveling around rural West Virginia in 1930. The Great Depression has set in, society is falling apart, and people are escaping through either destructive vice or blind faith.
While spending some time in jail for stealing a car, Mitchum's Harry Powell learns of $10,000 (nearly $150,000 today) that his cellmate robbed from a local bank, but is not told the exact location of the money. Beneficial for Powell, his cellmate is on death row for killing two people during the course of the robbery.
While spending some time in jail for stealing a car, Mitchum's Harry Powell learns of $10,000 (nearly $150,000 today) that his cellmate robbed from a local bank, but is not told the exact location of the money. Beneficial for Powell, his cellmate is on death row for killing two people during the course of the robbery.
Upon his release from jail, Powell departs for his cellmate's hometown to find his widow and the money. Unknown to all of the characters however, the bank robber left the money with his young son, John, and daughter, Pearl, (he stuffed it in his daughter's baby doll) and swore them to secrecy.
Powell enters John and Pearl's lives, courts then marries their mother, and makes his moves to find the family's unknown riches. I don't want to say any more about the plot, because you should definitely see this, but there's still a lot to dissect.
First, let's all enjoy how the movie starts:
First, let's all enjoy how the movie starts:
I love the disembodied space head imparting sound biblical wisdom to the disembodied heads of the space children. They're almost heavenly, which seems appropriate as the film transitions to some earth-bound children playing hide and seek and finding the body of a young girl in a cellar.
The musical cue as Mitchum's Powell is introduced tells us everything we need to know about him. My wife said at the end of the movie that she was glad that it wasn't a story about us discovering that Powell is evil. The movie shows us right away that this guy is bad, but is pretending to be good, and is clearly insane.
The conversations and relationships that people have with God in this movie are amazing, and is something that I've always found interesting in real life. For me, it's always been hard to differentiate between the earnest prayers of godly people and the meandering direct conversations with the divine that we hospitalize people for having. I think Charles Laughton is fascinated by this as well, because the film places the madman in a field of virtuous characters, and they all seem to be speaking the same language.
I'd imagine that during the Great Depression, sleepy rural towns like the one in the film, would become more drastic with their faith. Or they would turn to vice. The clearest thinker in the film, an old man John calls Uncle Birdy who says he has no time for preachers, is rendered feckless by drink and cowardice. Children become lost in a fractured society, and numerous characters remark on the number of wandering, parentless children who travel up and down the river looking for food and protection. The adults don't sound like they pity these children, they just sound angry with their parents for not doing their jobs.
There are a lot of opinions flying around. Mrs. Spoon, the wife of the town's candy shop owner speaks openly and brashly about what Willa, John and Pearl's now widowed mother, should or should not do. She gives a long and loud lesson at a picnic about how sex is a necessity of procreation, and that having sexual feelings is impure and improper (but only for women). Later in the film, though, she clucks her tongue when Powell tells her that Willa turned down his advances on their wedding night. In Mrs. Spoon's righteous world, women should give in to every advance their husband makes, but should derive no pleasure from the act at all.
(This sounds so unchanged from today's rural America. I chuckled out loud when Mr. Spoon called Mrs. Spoon, "mother" on multiple occasions. It might not have been as weird in 1955, but the way the film is crafted, the absurdity of it is not lost on Laughton.)
In reality, Powell is the one who rebukes his new wife's advances, telling her that he will never have sex with her, because they do not want to procreate. He denies Willa coldly, and admonishes her for having sexual feelings.
Powell definitely has a weird, understated thing with sex. At the beginning of the film, he hears God saying that He hates "perfume smellin' things, lacy things, things with curly hair" but still ends up at a strip show, where he angrily draws his knife. He thinks about killing the girl on stage, but reminds himself that there are too many other people around. "Can't kill the whole world," he sighs.
Powell is unhinged, and has replaced sex with murder. He won't, or perhaps more accurately can't, have sex, so he uses his knife. He even shows it to young Pearl in one memorable scene, and becomes excited and agitated when she goes to touch it. Super creepy stuff.
The bedroom scene between Powell and his new wife was one of the most striking shots I've seen in a long time:
The preacher is in his church, which is also his marital bedroom. He's raising his left hand to the sky (the hand with HATE written on it) as his wife reveals that she heard Powell violently trying to get the location of the $10,000 from the children. She's not angry, however; not even after Powell slaps her across the face. She sounds sleepy and blunted. Her only request is that he teach her The Way, how to be clean and pure with God just as Powell clearly is.
Willa is changed after meeting Powell. She becomes obsessed with cleanliness, appearing unhinged and manic while discussing how clean she is or could be. After she is turned down and shamed on her wedding night, the next scene shows her as wide-eyed and frantic in her devotion to God and her husband's church. My wife and I both agreed, she was horny af and hated herself for it.
While adult sexuality is a big theme in Night of the Hunter, predatory sex against children is the more insidious and shadowy theme. The children in this film are almost glowingly cherubic or piteously disheveled, but always innocent. The one child in the film whose innocence is damaged first is John: his father the bank robber tells him to keep a secret from everybody, even other trusted adults. This secret is about the location of the hidden money, but c'mon...what's the most common secret that adults make vulnerable children keep?
It's never explicitly stated that Powell is preying on the children sexually, but the genius of Laughton's direction puts it just under the surface. He knows that something as simple as a door closing and locking can be the most terrifying thing for a child.
There's also a scene later in the film when Powell is manipulating a young teenage girl for information. She doesn't fear him, and seems to crave the attention. He buys her ice cream, and she hangs all over him, asking if she's beautiful. She's another wastrel, forgotten by a destitute society. The road is cruel to lost children, and she's found a reliable way to get positive attention and rewards. Again, it's never explicitly stated, but the subtext is chilling and oh so upsetting.
In the 3rd act, the children escape from Powell by taking a small boat down a river. All the shots of the children along the river are framed with small woodland creatures. I didn't really understand it during the film, but I kind of get it now: they're all the little innocent things of nature, and they're all completely exposed to the cruelty of the bigger, stronger, and faster predators.
Watch how scary this is:
The children eventually find refuge with a kindly old woman, Mrs. Cooper, who takes them in and cares for them. She teaches them lessons and understands the trauma that they've gone through, even if she doesn't know the specifics.
There's a scene where the children are inside Mrs. Cooper's house hiding from Powell who is sitting outside on a stump singing hymns. She sits with a shotgun at the ready to defend her young charges. A poignant moment unfolds before her:
Mrs. Cooper is the first character in the film to understand the plight of children in a broken world. Their parents either ignored them or abandoned them. They asked them to keep secrets, or failed to protect them, blinded by their own desires and needs. Mrs. Cooper is the only shepherd they have now.
The ending is beautifully bizarre in a way that I feel David Lynch would appreciate. In fact, you can tell that Lynch learned a lot from watching how Laughton handled such a dark and disturbing film with subtlety and by highlighting the absurdity and terror of everyday life. Watching Night of the Hunter has only increased my appreciation of something like Eraserhead or Twin Peaks.
There's also a lot of silent film film influence here. Some scenes are framed like stage plays, where the whole set is flatly presented to the audience as a cross-section; almost like we're watching ants in an ant farm.
You can also see the impact that Weimar German films, particularly M, left on Laughton. M is another dark film, although more explicitly so, about a child murderer as a symptom of a fractured society.
And yes, the LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoos are exactly what inspired this:
The most incredible thing: this was Laughton's first and only film as a director! He'd done a ton of acting work, dating back to the silent era, but this was his only time behind the camera.
I feel eventually I'm going to get to a film that won't keep me up late typing my thoughts out, but luckily today is not that day.
Summary:
The Night of the Hunter is one of the most quietly terrifying films I've ever seen. Robert Mitchum's ability to convey subtle insanity couched in disarming charm makes him a perfect predator. Laughton's direction and cinematography presents a surrealistic and absurd rural America where fear and trauma are a silent part of everyday life. I can't recommend it enough, and I feel like my understanding of film has changed in a strange and beautiful way.
Go watch it!
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