A dark children's fairy tale as scary and evocative as anything the Brothers Grimm ever dreamed up, The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton) derives much of its sinister power from a truly unforgettable big-screen villain--Robert Mitchum's Harry Powell. A murderous ex-convict who hides his ugly nature behind a folksy smokescreen of Christian rhetoric, Mr. Powell insinuates himself with his former cellmate's newly widowed wife (Shelley Winters) in order to suss out the whereabouts of a stash of stolen money that the cellmate hid in an undisclosed location. Little does Mr. Powell know that the loot has been stuffed in a teddy bear the cellmate's two kids (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce) tote around as if it was any old plaything.
Mitchum is utterly riveting in a showcase scene that has Mr. Powell regale susceptible new followers with a monologue explaining the religious meaning behind the "love" and "hate" tattoos that adorn his knuckles (as most film buffs know, Martin Scorsese would later pay homage to the tattoos in his remake of another Mitchum vehicle, Cape Fear), and he's downright vicious in moments that demand Mr. Powell remove his facade to show the child-stalking killer underneath.
However, director Laughton, an actor who famously never directed another film after this one, is just as integral in creating unease within the viewer. He and cinematographer Stanley Cortez create a shadowy atmosphere influenced by German Expressionist classics and visually audacious for a suggestive horror film of the '50s, or of any era, really. Certain images--a high-angle shot that looks down upon the two kids escaping downriver on a raft from the point-of-view of a spider nestling in his intricate web; Chapin's young character spotting Mr. Powell on horseback as a menacing silhouette against the morning's rising sun from his perch in a barn he and Bruce's character hide in--have a strange power, as if they're worming their way into your subconscious as soon as you glimpse them.
Though the character of Mr. Powell acts as a daring critique of religious hypocrisy, Laughton and writer James Agee are mature enough to realize that religious faith can be used to noble ends as well as devious ones. When the kids take shelter with a God-fearing old woman, Ms. Cooper (an iron-willed Lillian Gish), whose house is like a miniature orphanage, it's surprising how immediately Ms. Cooper registers as a force just as strong in her maternal protectiveness as Mr. Powell is in his bloodthirsty greed. The third-act stand-off between these two self-proclaimed servants of God cements The Night of the Hunter as a resonant, timeless fable of good vs. evil. Grade: A
No comments:
Post a Comment