To Roger Ebert, 'The Night of the Hunter' is one of the Great Movies. To Pauline Kael, it's "one of the most frightening movies ever made." To me, well... it's neither. It definitely has its moments. Brilliant actor Charles Laughton's one and only directorial effort is a very offbeat, stylized film that takes a lot of chances. Unfortunately, not many of them work. The main problem I think is that the story it tries to tell is at odds with the presentation and performances. The latter suggest a kind of Twilight Zone-ish children's fable, dreamlike at times, not meant to resemble real life. And yet the story reminds one more of another film starring Robert Mitchum, 'Cape Fear;' gritty, realistic, even mean-spirited. The two just don't blend together into an effective whole. There is humor here and it is perhaps the most effective part of 'The Night of the Hunter.' Small town religion and Americana circa 1930 are spoofed throughout, sometimes pretty heavy-handedly, but it's hard not to laugh when Shelley Winters' character exclaims, "I feel clean! My body's a-quiverin' with cleanliness." Winters herself looks like she can barely keep from laughing after delivering the line. Mitchum has his share of funny moments too. It's when he's supposed to be menacing that the movie comes up short. His Preacher Harry Powell can't touch 'Cape Fear's' Max Cady in terms of malevolent creepiness. Powell is a con-artist posing as a man of God who discovers that two young siblings, John and Pearl Harper, know where $10,000 is hidden. It was given them by their now-dead father who had them swear never to reveal its whereabouts to anyone, even their mother Willa (Winters). Powell marries Willa for the express purpose of getting his hands on the money. The lack of any graphically believable violence is, in this case, a fatal flaw. When Powell finally comes after the children, his manner is more like a boogeyman in an Abbott & Costello movie than a genuinely deranged killer, which he's supposed to be. Now I know all the art-film critics would call me a numbskull for not appreciating the 'poetic' approach Laughton and his cinematographer take, but again, it just doesn't work for this kind of material. After the children escape, there is a lovely, almost surreal scene where they drift down a river in a skiff and the setting becomes even more like one in a dream or fairy tale. The art direction is beautiful and for a few moments, it is a magical film. The story takes a different direction during the last part of the movie, as John and Pearl are taken in by elderly woman, Rachel, a sort of bible-quoting, occasionally shotgun-toting Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. She runs an orphanage of sorts and protects the brother and sister when Powell comes after them, though not through any particularly imaginative means. He is eventually arrested and sentenced to hang. There are a few more bizarre scenes, such as the townspeople rising up in anger to lynch Powell once they discover his true past. They tear up a drugstore and march down the street carrying torches (as if they were going after Frankenstein's Monster) and we expect a vicious hanging scene, then the police simply smuggle Powell out a back door and drive him away. So much for the lynch mob. Rachel and the kids celebrate Christmas while Rachel spouts more homely homilies (she's got a million of 'em.) The end. Like I said, I don't know, maybe I'm completely insensitive and unperceptive but the best I can say about 'The Night of the Hunter' is that it's a very mixed bag. Billy Chapin (I wonder whatever happened to him) gives a fine performance as the boy John, who really is the character that holds the movie together. I think lurking somewhere in the myriad of ideas that make up 'The Night of the Hunter' is a great movie, but Charles Laughton just couldn't find it.
Review of The Night of the Hunter
