Night of the Hunter

To be shown: 23 April 2007

USA 1955
93 minutes
Director: Charles Laughton
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish.

Synopsis

Robert Mitchum gives what some consider his finest performance in a terrifying role as the sleepy-eyed, diabolical, dark-souled, self-appointed serial killer/Preacher with psychotic, murderous tendencies while in pursuit of $10,000 in cash. Lillian Gish played his opposite - a saintly good woman who provided refuge for the victimized children.

The disturbing, complex story was based on the popular, best-selling 1953 Depression-era novel of the same name by first-time writer Davis Grubb, who set the location of his novel in the town of Moundsville, WV, where the West Virginia Penitentiary (also mentioned in the film) was located. Grubb lived in nearby Clarksburg as a young teenager.

In addition, the visually striking black-white photography of Stanley Cortez (who also shot Welles' black and white The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)) and the evocative musical score of Walter Schumann (mixing hymns, children's songs, and orchestral music) are exceptional. However, the film was not nominated for a single Academy Award, in a year when the short romantic drama Marty (1955) unaccountably won the Best Picture Oscar.

The stylistic film, shot in only thirty-six days - an adult story with children as major characters - was extremely unusual and unpopular for its time for other reasons. It was black and white (when color was en vogue), shown in standard ratio (when theatres were showing Cinemascope wide-screen films), and it daringly portrayed a perverted, paedophile Preacher as the main protagonist - a villainous, obsessive, homicidal, and misogynous character with repressed sexuality and violence.