The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American horror thriller film directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee was based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb. The plot is about Preacher Harry Powell (Mitchum), a serial killer who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.
This movie is really special because it created such echoes across decades of cinematic history so much so that its fame is now significant, although at the time after its first screening it was regarded as such a failure that its filmmaker never directed again. Moreover, it's one best movies ever made (Cahiers du Cinéma selected it in 2008 as the second-best movie of all time behind Citizen Kane) because it's indeed one of those very few films even today more “seen without being seen”.
Its great strength is its ability to translate the “nightmarish Mother Goose story” (as Laughton dubbed it) trappings of its source material into what a reviewer once called "a distinct visual style that unifies its disparate genre roots in film noir, children’s movies and Southern Gothic aesthetics by way of a lyrically expressive style inspired by silent classics".
I guess that what is both the key and secret to its eventual success is that Laughton regarded the movie as a way to express a hidden side of himself, and thus he deeply invested himself also personally into the project, collaborating closely with the orginal author and using the art of cinematography to create the movie's really unique atmosphere.
Robert Mitchum considered The Night of the Hunter a significant and favorite movie, particularly praising the director Charles Laughton and co-star Lillian Gish for their contributions. No-one can deny that he took risks with his role as Reverend Harry Powell for Laughton's sake, and clearly came across as highly impressed by Gish's "grace and inner strength" which he felt was crucial to the film's enduring appeal.
As the eventual face-off evolves into one unforgettable climax, the message of the movie comes through with crystal clarity: Evil is alive in the world. Children must bear its brunt, but, as the film's heroine says, “They abide, they endure”. And, so does The Night of the Hunter
@robingoodfellow Before the movie's failure Paul Gregory (agent at MCA) and Laughton had already bought the film rights to Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. Laughton and Mailer discussed it together. A whole script was done – surely worth seeing now, for it may have been The Thin Red Line before its time
@robingoodfellow I guess that Touch of Evil is another example of that. Funny, but I think that Welles' Othello is a much better picture than Olivier's Richard III
