by Allan Fish
(USA 1955 93m) DVD1/2
Leaning on the everlasting arms
p Paul Gregory d Charles Laughton w James Agee novel Davis Grubb ph Stanley Cortez ed Robert Golden m Walter Schumann art Hilyard Brown cos Jerry Bos
Robert Mitchum (Harry Powell), Shelley Winters (Willa Harper), Lillian Gish (Rachel), Don Beddoe (Walt Spoon), Evelyn Varden (Icey Spoon), James Gleason (Birdie), Peter Graves (Ben Harper), Billy Chapin (John), Sally Jane Bruce (Pearl),
The Night of the Hunter truly is one of the weirdest movies ever made, but also one of the most wonderful. It’s very hard to categorise and it’s easy to see how audiences didn’t respond to it at the time with all its pure symbolism. Many films before and since had contained crooked or fallen preachers, but this protagonist is no Elmer Gantry. Harry Powell is one of the most psychotically evil and self-righteous people in movie history and it could so easily have become pantomime in the wrong hands. When Charles Laughton took Mitchum out for a drive to discuss the role, he told Mitchum that what he was looking for was someone who could play a despicable shit. Mitchum just turned to him and said “present.”
Set in thirties Ohio during the depression, Ben Harper has just committed a robbery and the police are about to corner him. He hides the money in his daughter’s small doll (though we don’t know this until halfway in) and is arrested, sentenced and hanged. Meanwhile, evil preacher Harry Powell, who has become a bible-busting Bluebeard who kills widows for their money, is sentenced to a month inside for car thieving and overhears Harper whispering in his sleep about the stolen money. Powell is released after Harper’s execution and sets off after his widow to find the money.
Laughton had never directed before and the film’s failure would prompt him never to direct again, but stars Mitchum and Gish kept championing him and the film and time has proven them right. This is a film about so many themes that one could analyse it to death, primarily the symbolism of mother earth and the beauty that our planet provides, as well as the more obvious one of looking after children. The look of the film cannot be faulted, with a visual feel rather reminiscent of an updated Mark Twain story mixed with some truly disquietingly beautiful photography from Stanley Cortez. Indeed, there are shots here that will haunt you for life; the dead Winters under the water in the model T, the silhouette of the horseback Powell riding along the horizon at twilight, Gish with gun in hand and Mitchum leaning on the fence singing ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms’ to each other. There is also rumoured to be a further symbolism that when animals, old ladies or water is present the children are safe and they are only in danger when neither is. Yet studying this too long will take away from the beauty witnessed as you are transported by the story like the children in the boat along the river.
Yet, though Laughton’s direction is sublime and the photography equally so, credit must also go to critic James Agee’s adaptation of Davis Grubb’s novel, which is a poem in itself. We all know that the best poems need the best orators to read them and the cast are superb. Winters may be called upon to do little but look stupid, and Gleason little but audition for Deliverance seventeen years too early, but Gish is the image of purity. Hers is the truest vision of motherhood, recalling her Mother Time endlessly rocking in Intolerance. But this is Mitchum’s film, from his first scene in the stolen car looking up to God and murmuring “you say the word, Lord, I’m on my way” to his final capture by the police with the stolen money falling around him. It truly is one of the most chilling performances in cinema and, in spite of various psychotic preachers in film and TV in recent times, there can only be one Harry Powell. His performance perhaps all the more remarkable because Laughton couldn’t stand kids and Mitchum himself directed some of the sequences with himself and the children and elicits wonderful performances from them. In preacher parlance, “Lord, you sure knew what you was doing, bringing me here to this very film set at this very time with a great role hidden there and immortality in the making.”
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Hi! Allan Fish,
What a very detailed review about a film that I have commented on 3 different times ( Over there on Rick’s blog, Tony’s blog and now here at WitD) and my opinion about this film still remain unchanged.
“I must admit actor/director Charles Laughton “tiptoed” in ‘Welles” and “noir” territory with his use of German Expressionism, high contrast lighting, deep shadows and the use of highly stylized distorted angles of reality when it came to the set design of his classic 1955 film The Night of the Hunter.” (Btw, The (my) quote above was copied and pasted)
I must admit this film is beyond classification. But, some authors do list this film as noir in their book(s)(such as: author Foster Hirsch, see comment below…) while on the other hand, some authors don’t list this film as a film noir in their books.(such as: author Spencer Selby)
Speaking of authors,…
…I was told by others (”Noiraholics”) if I wanted to read a “definitive” book about the 1955 film Night of the Hunter that I should “pick-up” a copy of the book Heaven and He** To Play With by Preston Neale Jones. According to a reviewer, that reviewed author Preston Neale Jones’s,” book… The film “The Night of the Hunter” is a “bonofide anomaly” in the noir canon, a film that harken back to the silent era in it opulent expressionism.
The only film directed by celebrated actor Charles Laughton, adapted from David Grubb’s haunting evocative novel. It has transcended noir to become a recognized film classic.”
The definition of Expressionism: Expressionism represent feelings and moods rather than objective reality.
Expressionism usually represent external reality in a highly stylized and subjective manner, attempting to convey a psychological or spiritual reality rather than a record of actual events.
According to author Foster Hirsch,(Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen)
The 1955 film Night of the Hunter was “Full-blown Hollywood Expressionism- “Because German Expressionism, was very influential in forging the “noir” style.
“…in Charles Laughton’s 1955 film Night of the Hunter the film is closer in spirit and visual design to the German Expressionist films than any other “noir” thriller.”
Allegory, Symbolic,
Dcd 😉
Cont….
Tony said, Dcd, as I said expressionism may help us identify a noir, but it is not a sufficient identifier of itself.”
Yes, I agree with you, but I was just trying to point out by referencing author Foster Hirsch, that unlike, Alexander Coleman, he think the film Night of the Hunter fit into the category of a film noir, nothing more nor nothing less.
In other words, I was just providing an example of, why he (author Foster Hirsch,) believe the film Night of the Hunter has elements of a film noir.)
Tony said,”I also disagree with Hirsch’s implication that a film is less or more noir based on the degree of expressionist stylisation.”
(Tony, personally, I wasn’t trying to prove Mr. Hirsch, case…one way or the other, when it comes to his thoughts about noir being based on the degree of expressionist stylization. But, your point is well taken.)
Where as on the other hand, Alexander Coleman, stated that he doesn’t consider the film Night of the Hunter” a film noir “period.”
Therefore, I was just pointing out the difficulty in “classifying” this film. As stated earlier by, the reviewer… Where he referred to this film as a “bonofied anomoly.”
Tks,
Dcd 😉
Allan, what can one say about this movie? Pauline Kael wrote (and I paraphrase) that it was like a dark fairy tale with children threatened by an evil force (Mitchum) and a fairy godmother (Gish) rescuing them. I once rented this movie and had just started it when friends dropped by with their daughter, who was about seven years old. She was hypnotized by the movie and watched it through to the end while her parents and I visited outside.
Glad you mentioned the photography of Stanley Cortez. He photographed (brilliantly) “The Magnificent Ambersons,” so the light-and-shadow Expressionistic look was nothing new to him.
When I think of this movie I instantly visualize four images: Mitchum sitting in the theater, where the tattoos on his knuckles are first revealed. (We can imagine what he does with the hand that says “hate.” What do you think he does with the hand that says “love”? Makes me think of the scene in “The Departed” where a stooge brings Jack Nicholson a severed hand and Nicholson says something like, “You’re sure this is the hand he masturbated with?”). The scene you mentioned with Winters in the submerged car, with her hair floating all around her like seaweed. The scene where the children are floating down the river and are photographed through a spiderweb. And the scene where Lillian Gish is sitting in the rocking chair with the rifle on her lap. (There is a scene very like this in “Intruder in the Dust.” I wonder if it was a deliberate emulation.)
This was an apt but to me unexpected choice on your part. It’s also on the Cahiers du Cinema list of the 100 greatest films of all time. In fact, it’s no. 2, after “Citizen Kane”!
If there were a Dardo awarded for “comments” at blog sites, I think we’d have to say that R.D. would be a contender for the top spot!
Everything you say here (Cortez’s expressionistic photography, those four searing “images” and the acknowledgement that it made the Cashir’s Top 100 is simply magisterial.
Kudos to you R.D.!
Hello WitD readers. I’m sure all of you NIGHT OF THE HUNTER devotees will want to check out the review of the film posted this wek by our own Tony D’Ambra at his FilmsNoir.net site. It’s an excellent read and a partial counterpoint to Allan’s piece. (although Tony makes it clear he likes the film a lot)
Here is the link:
http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/the-night-of-the-hunter-1955-not-noir.html
This is a great film, that I have always promoted to anyone who will listen. The review by Allan Fish is justly excellent.
Thank God there isn’t a dardo for such things, for that’s for sycophants, and I can only thank DeeDee and R.D. for their comments. It’s a personal favourite film, what more can I say? Though it’s never seen without a tinge of bitterness at its treatment and what it did to Charles Laughton, an actor I have always had great empathy for.
“Thank God there isn’t a dardo for such things, for that’s for sycophants”
Boy aren’t we the cynical one today? Ha!
And Robert, my dear cousin, thank you as well!
………fascinating comment thread here, and a fine review of a true classic. I love Laughton too………
Great review!!!”Night of the Hunter,” is a haunting movie that slowly descends into an exquisitely-filmed, brilliantly-acted nightmare about a malign preacher and the two children who are trying to escape. Like an old fairy tale by a modern Grimm, it’s full of terror, magic, beauty and darkness — and Robert Mitchum’s amazing, chilling performance.
Allan, though you’ve approached the matter with your trademark (and I must say occasionally smile-inducing) acerbicity, and this isn’t meant to criticize Sam in the least, I think your dismissal could be applied to the whole Dardo thing in general. I’ve always been a shade skeptical of cronyism, perhaps because like Groucho I wouldn’t want to belong to any clubs that would initiate me as a member, but by the same note I yearn to be part of those that don’t offer me the time of day. I modestly accepted a Dardo on my own site a few months ago but didn’t pass it on because I feel the whole process is so subjective to be devoid of any meaning. Dardos are nice acknowledgments, but when sites don’t shower them on particular writers, then those writers’ delicate worlds can just as easily turn dark and suicidal (rather noir-esque, let’s say). And aside from the fact that getting worked up over a non-award is the zenith of idiocy and self-absorption, it’s also wasted time that could have been spent writing reviews (ditto to those that lovingly detail their Dardo-centric entries). This isn’t the appropriate forum to ask the question, but the film-blogging community needs a better agent of cohesion and moral support than the blunt Dardo. I just don’t quite know what it should be…
Back on topic…this is one of your finest write-ups, Allan, probably because it’s one of my favorite films, and your burrowing into the archetypal resonance of Gish’s character is superb. I think she was the appropriate person for the role in many ways: not only did she at that point encapsulate the ideal of a matriarch, but her career affixes her to the height of a matriarch in cinema history as well. And so much of Night of the Hunter‘s appeal seems to me “meta”. As the children float down the superficial river I delight in knowing that it’s a controlled set, and it somehow makes the enterprise all the more terrifying when one considers Mitchum’s realistic performance. It’s as if the horror springs not from a suspension of disbelief but from the film’s very artificiality: if Mitchum’s preacher can terrorize an obvious soundstage, who’s to say he isn’t under my bed, waiting?
And Allan (and whoever else), have you read the book “Heaven and Hell to Play With” on the film’s making? It’s one of my favorite pieces of film-specific history. [Oh, I see DCD has already noted this book. I highly recommend it.]
Perhaps, we should award Grouchos for those who patently self-promote. Apropos my favorite Groucho story. He went to lunch at a restaurant with a bunch of studio suits, who before sitting down hung their jackets on their chairs. Groucho not having a jacket, took off his trousers and hung them on his chair before sitting down.
This is one of my favorite films from childhood…truly haunting. The ending always seemed a bit “false” to me, but everything up to that was perfection.
Interesting to know Laughton hated the kids! Perhaps they sensed that, and that is why they often seem scared stiff!
Thanks very much David Noack! And David Schleicher too!
Jon, what can I say? Your eloquence knows no peers, and I can’t dispute your well-reasoned aversion to the Dardos, which was rather humourously corroborated by Tony, using the Marx brothers as common ground.
I am sure Allan will address your superlative comments about the Laughton. That is quite a flattering statement you make there about Allan’s “archetypal resonance of Gish’s character.” And yes, I do agree it is an excellent piece.
I am leaving the house now for a late-night showing of Jan Troell’s EVERLASTING MOMENTS in Manhattan, but I will be taking a close look tomorrow at your new essay at the Powerstrip, (actually SLANT) of your new review of NEW YORK SERENADE, which opened here at the Cinema Village, and which I had lined up as a “possibility.” Well, your two-star review isn’t so promising, but let’s see what you say specifically. Thanks again my good friend!
Thanks again everyone, and especially Jon, as I can’t agree more with your general comments on the dardos. At least they’re tailor-made for a forum about fim, whose own awards are equally backslapping exercises in self-congratulation. Basically, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” I prefer to see things given out for more worthy reasons that that.
Couldn’t agree more about Groucho either…but what some call cynicism, I call realism.
hey guys, I’d like to thank DeeDee for the reference to the book of the making of the film, which would probably not have come to my notice due to it’s title, any more during the countdown would be appreciated. Thanks, bobby
Thanks very much for that Thank You, Bobby.
Dee Dee is the best!
[…] For further reading, AMC’s Filmsite offers a fantastic analysis, and there is a wonderful entry from Wonders in the Dark, located here. […]