The Night of the Hunter
1955 Directed by Charles Laughton
Synopsis
The wedding night, the anticipation, the kiss, the knife, BUT ABOVE ALL...THE SUSPENSE!
A religious fanatic marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real daddy hid $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery.
Cast
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"It's a hard world for little things."
I read in multiple places that The Night of the Hunter was a critical and commercial failure when it was released in the United States way back in 1955. After finally seeing this dark little gem after years of procrastination, I can fully understand HOW it would've been a failure but I still don't know WHY.
The Night of the Hunter is just inches short of being a masterpiece. A truly one of a kind film both figuratively and literally. Not a lot of other films come close to blending many genres and tones this seamlessly and director/actor Charles Laughton never got a chance to prove himself twice. The failure of the film…
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One of my unspoken rules here was that I wasn't going to give any movie a five-star rating on its first watch. It was really only a matter of time before I looked like an asshole on that one.
Admittedly, I am a sucker for stylized sets and expressionistic lighting and movies about bad people doing bad things. But apart from my personal tastes, The Night of the Hunter is filmmaking firing on all cylinders.
There's nothing new I can add to the discussion of this film, but I will say that I was fairly surprised at the turn it took in the third act revealing itself to be not (only) a noir thriller, but a classic fairy tale set in the real world.
. . . and that crazy sound design move when Mitchum yells at the kids was so cool it broke my brain.
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One of cinema’s great travesties is that Charles Laughton only directed one official film. So poorly received, both critically and commercially, was The Night of the Hunter that Laughton never helmed another film again. Whilst many works of art go unappreciated in their creator’s lifetime it still begs the question: why were people in 1955 such fucking idiots?
To miss this film’s brilliance is difficult to comprehend. Laughton has created one of the great American films of the ‘50s, a decade positively bursting with classics. It is hard to pigeonhole (and may well be the reason for its poor reception upon release) because whilst it is a noir thriller it feels more like a twisted bedtime story. It blends the…
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While watching The Night of the Hunter, I was repeatedly reminded of Antichrist; I'm still not entirely sure that's a valid comparison, but it's what I thought of. I think there are some very superficial similarities - the beautiful, dream/nightmare-like expressionist style, the detailed shots of animals. But I also think that The Night of the Hunter seemed like a horror movie in the way that Antichrist was a horror movie - not a traditional one, but one that is still very much so, at its core. I think I was even more disturbed by The Night of the Hunter, which did not rely on shock for its horror.
I found this film to be strangely terrifying. The picture is…
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Ah yes, The Night of the Hunter: the box office sensation that launched a thousand copycat Southern-Gothic-German-Expressionist-Noir-Faerie-Tales onto American movie screens in the 1950s.
I can't really add anything to the critical argument for this film, but I will say that there really, truly isn't anything else like it in the history of the movies. Its mood, ethereal and pulpy and mythical and nightmarish all at once, must be seen to be believed. It's like a fever dream, if said fever dream was narrated by Flannery O'Connor. It's a film that burrows into your consciousness and will never, ever leave.
Watching it again, I was most impressed by the collective talent on display. This has long been lamented as Charles…
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"It's still here among us, tainting us."
So much has been written and spoken about The Night Of The Hunter over the last 57 years, and for the most part the focus of such attention has been on three things - the terrible critical and box office reception it received on its release, the fact that it was to be Charles Laughton's only (credited) film as director and Robert Mitchum's performance.
These three elements loom over The Night Of The Hunter, casting a shadow over it almost as foreboding and dominating as the shadows cast by Mitchum's psychopathic preacher as he stalks around the home of Shelley Winters in an attempt to terrify her children into revealing the whereabouts of…
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Yeah, this one's kind of a big deal.
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This movie is carried by an amazing performance of Robert Mitchum as pure evil and absolutely stunning cinemathography. Charles Laughton knows how to play with the restrictions of black and white cinema and delivers some of the most iconic imagery I have ever seen.
While these two things make this worth a watch almost 60 years after its original release, sadly the story and the very heavy handed christian themes haven't aged as well. It was also very surprising for me as an European, that somehow this movie made me understand America a little better. I'm not saying you're all buttoned up knife swinging maniacs, but I see where you're coming from!
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Gets better with every watch..
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"It's a hard world for little things."
I read in multiple places that The Night of the Hunter was a critical and commercial failure when it was released in the United States way back in 1955. After finally seeing this dark little gem after years of procrastination, I can fully understand HOW it would've been a failure but I still don't know WHY.
The Night of the Hunter is just inches short of being a masterpiece. A truly one of a kind film both figuratively and literally. Not a lot of other films come close to blending many genres and tones this seamlessly and director/actor Charles Laughton never got a chance to prove himself twice. The failure of the film…
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Robert Mitchum in blistering form in Charles Laughton's masterpiece. An essential watch.
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This is the perfect dark fairy tale, full of wondrous images, childlike sensibility, disturbing horror and biblical weight. While somewhat dated and flawed, it is a visually striking debut nevertheless.
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Not quite the undeniable classic I was anticipating - I'd riskily venture as far as saying that it comes across as more dated than many of its peers - but it's still got a strong plot, a wonderful sense of impending doom, and that amazing Robert Mitchum performance.
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What's better than an American Classic? An American classic with expressionist sets that will send your senses tingling and your adrenaline rushing.
I personally dislike films with characters all about self righteousness and religious values and patriarch ideas. But I couldn't help but enjoy this small gem. Why? Mainly because of it's main character who takes all these ideas using them sarcastically as his cover up and destroying them on his way. And this iconic character is made even more perfect by the excellent performance by one Robert Mitchum. Charming, mysterious and downright ruthless.
However, it's the direction of the film that makes it an exceptional film watching experience. The film is directed by the great Charles Laughton who made… -
The film started fantastically, building up the the mood and characters well. Mitchum was instantly portrayed as an evil man, a woman killer. That aspect of the character could have been used as a "twist", but glad it wasn't
It was interesting to see such an evil character posing as a preacher. I would imagine, that back during release, that would have been completely unheard of.
Mitchum performs almost flawlessly in this. He is the believable God-fearing preacher when needs be, but the malevolent killer when he wants something.
The film has great use of music, particularly the haunting hymn sung by Mitchum. The lighting and camera was of a very high calibre.
There was a massive difference in tone between beginning and end of film. The somberness to joyousness.
Overall ,well directed and, brilliant all round.