Per books like The Bad & the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties or special features on the film’s Criterion Collection release, Charles Laughton looked to the past in defining the visual look of his directorial debut The Night of the Hunter. Laughton reportedly told everyone who would listen that this 1955 feature would harken back to the visual tendencies of silent cinema rather than imagery conventions of mid-50s filmmaking. 1955 was not a “wasteland” of visually imaginative cinema, necessarily. This was the year of East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, after all.
However, looking at 1955’s fourth-biggest movie, Oklahoma!, does reinforce the kind of cinematography norms Laughton understandably wanted to avoid. Save for one elaborate dream sequence, that musical adaptation has lame backgrounds paired up with deeply stiff camerawork. Movies had become too enamored with simply mimicking and chronicling reality, as seen by 1955’s biggest movie being Cinerama Holiday, a straightforward travelogue capturing footage of various American cities. It was time for Laughton to bring some F.W. Murnau-style magic back to cinema. Though reviled and critically lambasted back in its day, The Night of the Hunter’s audacious filmmaking has aged like a fine wine. We were truly robbed not getting to see Laughton direct a slew of further movies.
Having already seen Hunte in 2019, revisiting this feature theatrically in 35mm (thank you, Texas Theatre!) was like experiencing it for the first time again. That prologue of children’s heads lingering in the stars alone is extra striking when it occupies a massive screening filling up your entire line of sight. For those not in the know, The Night of the Hunter tells the saga of "Preacher" Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a psychopath who travels around America in the Great Depression slaughtering women and "communicating" with the Lord. His exploits lead him to a 30-day prison stint where he learns from incarcerated bank robber Ben Harper (Peter Graves) that this man hid $10,000 in his home.
That domicile is occupied by his wife Willa (Shelley Winters) and children John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). When you’re posing as a preacher and saying that you’re acting in God’s name, you can do a lot. That includes strolling into the town Ben used to call home and begin courting Willa. While Powell externally say his intentions are pure, John doesn’t trust him. This boy made a promise to his father to protect that money and this shady new character doesn’t sit right with him.
Among The Night of the Hunter’s many standout qualities that stood out to me on this repeat viewing was the singing. Throughout the feature, characters sing diegetic tunes, hymns, or chants without any orchestral accompaniment on the soundtrack. Powell’s love for ominously harmonizing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" is a famous example of this. However, there’s also a bunch of schoolchildren taunting John and Pearl (whose father is due to be hung soon) with a song about “the hangman”. Later, Pearl croons a nursery rhyme when she and her brother begin traveling down the river. Decades before every dramatic movie trailer had a creepy children’s choir cover famous pop songs, Laughton was already employing this tactic in The Night of the Hunter!
Having these songs and chants sung against such an empty auditory landscape accentuates the loneliness and ominousness permeating The Night of the Hunter. This is a feature where so often characters are totally on their own, whether they are drunken houseboat residents, runaway children, or women caught in abusive relationships. The hauntingly isolated nature of adolescents singing about a “hangman” or Powell’s “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” reprisals sonically encapsulates a world where isolation is the norm. That’s what makes Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) and Powell's overlapping dueling performances of "Everlasting Arms” so compelling. Finally, a challenger has appeared reclaiming singing from representations of evil and solitariness.
This auditory leitmotif is one of countless fascinating qualities in The Night of the Hunter. Naturally, that also includes the unforgettable imagery concocted by Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez. In F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh, there's this tremendous shot of the film's protagonist walking away from a hotel only for the building to start collapsing in on him. It’s all an illusion in his mind, a reflection of his overwhelming guilt. It’s a magnificent image masterfully utilizing heightened visuals to capture deeply believable emotions. That’s the approach Laughton and Cortez employ on The Night of the Hunter. Like in that Last Laugh sequence, Hunter communicates dread and powerlessness fully rooted in the real world with mesmerizingly dream-like visuals.
Those qualities manifest in visual facets like outstandingly-realized silhouettes. As any black-and-white Akira Kurosawa movie could tell you, shadows just look better in monochromatic filmmaking. They’re also smartly used in The Night of the Hunter, particularly when making Powell an ominous figure. He can just be standing there on the porch and his silhouette still exudes an eerie air. That famous wide shot of Powell atop his horse in the nighttime distance also deftly employs both silhouettes and a tremendous sense of space.
Watching The Night of the Hunter on the big screen reaffirms what a masterfully blocked movie this is. There’s such unnerving purposefulness to every void that appears on-screen. The loneliness of John and Pearl as they contend with Powell’s relentless pursuit of $10,000 is extra tangible with Laughton’s emphasis on uncrowded expansive images. This method lets striking visuals like Willa’s underwater corpse really sink in with the viewer. Nothing distracts you when these haunting shots fill up the screen. Plus, it really communicates the idea that these characters are on their own. There are no saviors in the distance or the corner of the frame. There’s just an evil preacher constantly humming “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”
The Night of the Hunter’s standing as one of the best-shot movies in history is only more apparent than ever when experiencing it on the big screen. I wasn’t surprised the cinematography blew me away in a theater. What surprised me was how emotionally moving Hunter’s third act is, which concerns Rachel Cooper taking in John and Pearl. My mind had forgotten how emotionally moving these segments of the film are. James Agee’s script depicts John as a traumatized aloof boy hesitant to get close to anyone. He’s already lost his parents. Plus, the world constantly believes Powell over him. Why should he ever emotionally connect to anyone again?
Then he becomes fascinated with Cooper’s telling of the story of Moses to the other three girls she’s taking care of. As John and Cooper talk about scripture, the former character corrects his elder about how many kings were in the yarn she just spun. Cooper’s response to this is to treat John like a human and value his perspective. It’s a quietly moving moment getting so much power of how it contrasts with Powell’s warped use of scripture. This man uses Biblical texts and references to manipulate others, to wield power over the innocent. Those in John and Pearl’s initial community also use theology for similarly shallow means, like dehumanizing women. Cooper, meanwhile, uses scripture to build bridges between people and values John speaking his mind.
Lillian Gish’s outstanding performance (possibly one of the greatest ever given in American cinema) exudes a unique sense of warmth mixed with a take-no-nonsense attitude. Gish makes it instantaneously clear both why people would open up to Rachel Cooper and also that this is the kind of woman who reaches for a shotgun in times of turmoil. The mastery of her performance is further exemplified in a later sequence where one of her kids, Ruby (Gloria Castillo), confesses that she hasn’t spent afternoons at her lessons. She’s actually been out seeing boys. In response, Cooper totally upended my expectations and reacts to the sobbing Ruby with warmth and compassion. “Child... You were looking for love,” she tells the distraught youngster, “in the only foolish way you knew how.” It’s a moment of such aching vulnerability and unexpected understanding that left me in tears.
This Night of the Hunter revisit reaffirmed qualities I’d always considered high points of Laughton’s only directorial effort. But as I dabbed tears away from that Rachel Cooper/Ruby sequence, I was impressed with how many new glorious artistic highs Hunter unveiled to me. This astonishing masterpiece really has no shortage of impressive details. Back in the mid-50s, The Night of the Hunter bombed. It’s a miracle such a thematically and formally challenging film even hit American theaters in this era, it would’ve been astonishing if it caught on with the public then. Time has been oh so kind to this production, though. 70 years later, The Night of the Hunter (especially if you can see it on the big screen in 35mm) is more impressive and visually remarkable than ever.