The Night of the Hunter

Released: July 26, 1955

Studio: United Artists

Genre: crime drama/film noir

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 0.65 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 2.70 Worldwide: ?

Directing: Charles Laughton

Screenwriting: James Agee

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish

Review:

This “somber tale of good vs. evil” ^A07 is “a stark…black-and-white thriller” ^FS which was “a huge box-office failure” ^ML that was also initially panned by critics. ^MSN However, it is “now one for the ages,” ^RS thanks in part to “its ability to straddle both children’s fairytale and film noir.” ^MSN “If the Grimm brothers had made movies, they would have been life this.” ^ML

It features “a haunting, chilling lead performance by Robert Mitchum,” ^FS who “was playing charismatic psychopaths before De Niro or Walken entered high school.” ^PM Night of the Hunter is marked by “the absolute authority of Mitchum’s performance – easy, charming, infinitely sinister.” ^T95

He plays Harry Powell, “a murderous preacher” ^PM “prowling the Ohio River Valley” ^FS in rural America in the 1930s. With LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles, he’s “convinced he’s carrying out the Lord’s wishes.” ^PM “It was – and is – a shocking depiction of a man of God.” ^PM

He “weds a dead condemned killer’s lonely widow (Winters), and then relentlessly hunts his own innocent step-children across the Depression Era Bible Belt to get at their father’s stolen fortune of $10,000.” ^FS “The final segment pits the Preacher against Lillian Gish as a symbol of protecting Goodness, rocking at night on a porch with a shotgun across her lap, while he sings his perverse hymn in counterpoint: ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.’” ^FS

The film was adapted from a novel by Davis Grubb and was the only directorial effort from “esteemed British actor” ^MSN Charles Laughton. His “deliberately old-fashioned direction throws up a startling array of images: an amalgam of Mark Twain-like exteriors (idyllic riverside life) and expressionist interiors, full of moody nighttime shadows. The style reaches its pitch in the extraordinary moonlight flight of the two children downriver, gliding silently in the distance, watched over by animals seen in huge close-up, filling up the foreground of the screen.” ^T95