The crickets are chirping amid the stillness of what must be a balmy summer night. Bathed in moonlight sits an old farmhouse, its high gabled roof and slatted walls shining brilliantly against the dark outline of a quaint picket fence. And there, in sharp silhouette is the slim figure of the Hunter perched on a tree stump facing the house, conveniently dappled in shadows from a nearby oak. He slowly begins to croon a smooth a cappella rendition of "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," his baritone voice filling the night air with dread and premeditation. Also cloaked in shadows is old Rachel Cooper, sitting in her chair on the screened porch breathing silently, ever vigilant, staring towards the voice piercing the darkness, her shotgun laid ready across her lap. Perhaps they can see one another, perhaps not. As the Hunter once again sings the refrain, Rachel even joins him in canon, the blend of their voices beautiful but eerie, ancient foes locked in eternal conflict, watching and waiting. Suddenly, the night dissolves in an instant as the screen covering the porch clots with blazing reflected light--a child has innocently approached Rachel with a burning candle, not realizing the mortal significance of the stalemate she has disrupted. Rachel frantically blows out the flame, but it is too late: the Hunter has vanished from his perch, and surely lurks invisibly somewhere close in the darkness, anywhere, everywhere, waiting with a patience as old as time. Rachel gazes into the abyss and hears the echoed hoot of an owl. The owl too is perched on a tree, his snowy blank face like a mask, imperial and emotionless, floating disembodied in the night. He shakes his feathers and spies a lone young rabbit scurrying clumsily on the ground. When the rabbit screams, Rachel's expression falls in weary recognition, her large eyes sad, and she says to herself, "it's a hard world for little things."
In The Night of the Hunter, it is indeed a hard world for little things. To siblings John (Billy Chapin) and little Pearl Harper (Sally Jane Bruce), it must seem like an unending nightmare fraught with immense evil and unspeakable loss. That their world is so mesmerizing and beautiful for us should almost make us feel guilty if this was not the work of fiction that it is.
John and Pearl seem like ordinary kids growing up somewhere in rural West Virginia along the Ohio River Valley during the depression. Their father, Ben (Peter Graves), robs a bank for ten thousand dollars, kills two people in the process, and before his children's eyes hides the money, is arrested, and is subsequently convicted. It so happens that his cell mate, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), is a prolific but opportunistic serial killer of widows who is nabbed for stealing a car, the full extent of his crimes apparently unknown to authorities. Tattooed alternately along the knuckles of his hands are the words "L-O-V-E" and "H-A-T-E", and it is not a coincidence that the hand that holds his ever-present switchblade is labeled "HATE". He saves that hand for women in particular. He has adopted the nickname "Preacher", professing a religion he and the Almighty "worked out betwixt us." Though Preacher wheedles and begs, Ben Harper takes the secret location of the ten thousand dollars he stole to his grave when he is swiftly executed by the state.
Preacher is not a subtle character, but upon his equally swift release, he is somehow able to dupe just about everyone into believing that he is actually a former prison chaplain who bonded with the late Ben Harper before his execution. With a broad swagger, he ingratiates himself into the lives of not only his ex-cellmate's children, but prominent members of their gossipy tight-knit community, and even their mother Willa (Shelley Winters). His masquerade is so persuasive that in almost no time at all Willa accepts his hand in marriage (the one tattooed "LOVE", no doubt).
Of course, the markings professed on his right hand are a lie: Preacher is not interested in love, or Willa, or anything except the ten thousand dollars Ben Harper hid somewhere. Willa doesn't know or care where the money is, and indeed, is only interested in love. At the conclusion of a marriage possibly even shorter than its courtship, Willa sits bolt upright tied up behind the wheel of her car at the bottom of the river, her hair flowing gloriously amongst the long river weeds, a deep, jagged slash across her throat.
Preacher knows the newly orphaned children are the key to the money, but when they narrowly escape his clutches and sail down the river, the cat and mouse game really begins. Preacher becomes the titular Hunter, and his obsessive pursuit of young John and Pearl leads us through an odyssey of astonishing beauty and madness. Along the way, an elderly lady named Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) becomes their protector, proving herself an unlikely but ultimate adversary to Preacher, a woman who is as committed to goodness as he is boundless evil.
Charles Laughton directed The Night of the Hunter at the height of his acting career. It was the first and only film he ever directed. Upon release, it was widely considered a failure, but today is often lauded as one of the best films ever made. Following a basic Southern Gothic formula, The Night of the Hunter is a savage antithesis to the preachy moralizing and sentimental pedagogy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The Preacher is no Atticus Finch, but the reverse is equally true.
The Night of the Hunter has a special place in my heart due to its heightened characterizations and a visual aesthetic that has been charitably labeled "expressionistic" but is actually nothing but baroque exaggeration. Like the smooth voice of the preacher, this film is hypnotic, casting a spell of affection it may not entirely deserve. There is something profound and exhilarating watching The Night of the Hunter for the first time--the scenes where the children glide down a shimmering river fill me with thrill and mystery, and the silhouette of the preacher riding a lone horse along the glowing horizon singing his hymn with patient omniscience stills the very blood in my veins. Too canny to be classified an avant-grade experiment (a la Eraserhead) and too dreamy to totally suspend disbelief, The Night of the Hunter is a startlingly gorgeous work of art that challenges us to find good in the face of evil, beauty within ugliness, and light in the darkness.
In The Night of the Hunter, it is indeed a hard world for little things. To siblings John (Billy Chapin) and little Pearl Harper (Sally Jane Bruce), it must seem like an unending nightmare fraught with immense evil and unspeakable loss. That their world is so mesmerizing and beautiful for us should almost make us feel guilty if this was not the work of fiction that it is.
John and Pearl seem like ordinary kids growing up somewhere in rural West Virginia along the Ohio River Valley during the depression. Their father, Ben (Peter Graves), robs a bank for ten thousand dollars, kills two people in the process, and before his children's eyes hides the money, is arrested, and is subsequently convicted. It so happens that his cell mate, Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), is a prolific but opportunistic serial killer of widows who is nabbed for stealing a car, the full extent of his crimes apparently unknown to authorities. Tattooed alternately along the knuckles of his hands are the words "L-O-V-E" and "H-A-T-E", and it is not a coincidence that the hand that holds his ever-present switchblade is labeled "HATE". He saves that hand for women in particular. He has adopted the nickname "Preacher", professing a religion he and the Almighty "worked out betwixt us." Though Preacher wheedles and begs, Ben Harper takes the secret location of the ten thousand dollars he stole to his grave when he is swiftly executed by the state.
Preacher is not a subtle character, but upon his equally swift release, he is somehow able to dupe just about everyone into believing that he is actually a former prison chaplain who bonded with the late Ben Harper before his execution. With a broad swagger, he ingratiates himself into the lives of not only his ex-cellmate's children, but prominent members of their gossipy tight-knit community, and even their mother Willa (Shelley Winters). His masquerade is so persuasive that in almost no time at all Willa accepts his hand in marriage (the one tattooed "LOVE", no doubt).
Of course, the markings professed on his right hand are a lie: Preacher is not interested in love, or Willa, or anything except the ten thousand dollars Ben Harper hid somewhere. Willa doesn't know or care where the money is, and indeed, is only interested in love. At the conclusion of a marriage possibly even shorter than its courtship, Willa sits bolt upright tied up behind the wheel of her car at the bottom of the river, her hair flowing gloriously amongst the long river weeds, a deep, jagged slash across her throat.
Preacher knows the newly orphaned children are the key to the money, but when they narrowly escape his clutches and sail down the river, the cat and mouse game really begins. Preacher becomes the titular Hunter, and his obsessive pursuit of young John and Pearl leads us through an odyssey of astonishing beauty and madness. Along the way, an elderly lady named Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) becomes their protector, proving herself an unlikely but ultimate adversary to Preacher, a woman who is as committed to goodness as he is boundless evil.
Charles Laughton directed The Night of the Hunter at the height of his acting career. It was the first and only film he ever directed. Upon release, it was widely considered a failure, but today is often lauded as one of the best films ever made. Following a basic Southern Gothic formula, The Night of the Hunter is a savage antithesis to the preachy moralizing and sentimental pedagogy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The Preacher is no Atticus Finch, but the reverse is equally true.
The Night of the Hunter has a special place in my heart due to its heightened characterizations and a visual aesthetic that has been charitably labeled "expressionistic" but is actually nothing but baroque exaggeration. Like the smooth voice of the preacher, this film is hypnotic, casting a spell of affection it may not entirely deserve. There is something profound and exhilarating watching The Night of the Hunter for the first time--the scenes where the children glide down a shimmering river fill me with thrill and mystery, and the silhouette of the preacher riding a lone horse along the glowing horizon singing his hymn with patient omniscience stills the very blood in my veins. Too canny to be classified an avant-grade experiment (a la Eraserhead) and too dreamy to totally suspend disbelief, The Night of the Hunter is a startlingly gorgeous work of art that challenges us to find good in the face of evil, beauty within ugliness, and light in the darkness.