LOVE and HATE (The Night Of The Hunter (DVD))

Member Name: tomflint

Product:	The Night Of The Hunter (DVD)
Date:	27/11/08 (83 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing imagery and performances.

Disadvantages: None at all.

'The Night Of The Hunter' was made in 1955 and is always highly regarded whenever I look at polls of the greatest ever films etc, so I decided to see what I thought of it. To my mind it absolutely deserves its reputation as a film classic with wonderfully eerie black and white photography and a stunning central performance from Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum plays Harry Powell a self appointed preacher. He is only a preacher in respect of the clothes he wears and passages from the Bible he quotes. He is far from what he seems. The audience is given suspicion early on, by the way his character behaves and acts, that this is no ordinary preacher. He drives his car and talks to God in a conversational style rather than prayer.

Whilst in prison for a minor offence, Powell meets Ben Harper, a robber who is to be hanged for killing 2 men and stealing 10,000 dollars. Harper has given the stolen loot to his 2 children John and Pearl and hidden the money in Pearl's rag doll. John, being the eldest child and fiercely loyal to his father takes an oath that he will never reveal the whereabouts of the money to anyone.

Powell becomes obsessed with finding the 10,000 dollars and upon his release from prison he worms his way into the Harper's small town community, pulling the wool over the eyes of the locals and Harper's widow Willa [a fine performance by Shelley Winters]. He ends up marrying Willa, and from something Harper had said in his sleep in the prison cell, Powell has worked out that the children know where the money is.

So begins the cat and mouse game between Powell and the children as he tries to get them to tell him where the money is.
The children flee and are taken in by a kindly spinster Rachel Cooper, played by veteran of the silent screen Lillian Gish. This builds to an exciting climax between Gish and Mitchum's character.

As the preacher with LOVE and HATE tattooed on each hand, Mitchum gives one of cinema's greatest performances of evil ever. Mitchum is a more complex psycho than film audiences to this point had been used to. In today's films its common for the bad guy to be cunning and deceitful to get what he wants. But this is an early high watermark for that sort of performance.

The film has clearly influenced much of what has come after, my knowledge of films of this period is a little sketchy so I can't really talk about German expressionism, but suffice to say this film brought many European art house influences to a Hollywood film, and consequently a bigger audience. Watch out for a really evocative underwater scene which the film is famous for.

Director Charles Laughton was a highly respected Oscar winning film and stage actor and this was his first attempt at film direction. It is said that his dismay at the poor reception the film received at the time led to him never directing a film again, although he only lived another 7 years after this film was released.

Shelley Winters performance in this film is similar to the one she gives in 'Lolita' and she plays the buxom housewife very well. Lillian Gish is also great in her role. But there's no doubt that this is Mitchum's film with his towering central performance, the kind of thing that should have won an Oscar but didn't because it was just a bit too far ahead of everything.

A stunning piece of work and well worth buying on dvd. It can be bought for around £5 on Amazon or Play, probably closer to £10 in the shops. But there is nothing on the dvd aside from a trailer and scene selection/subtitles. That doesn't really matter though as the film stands up on its own just fine.

Summary: Deserves its 'classic' status.