THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955)
Night of the Hunter is one of those rare films that seep into the public consciousness. The immediately familiar image of a pair of knuckles respectively tattooed with “Love,” and “Hate,” appears first here. It is also one of those films that many know about but fewer have actually seen. This is a bit tragic, since the film is also rare in its quality, in its ability to surprise, shock, and delight, and in its ability to reward many successive viewings.
More than Frankenstein, more than Schreck’s Nosferatu or Lugosi’s Dracula or our half-assed modern equivalents built out of CG pixels, Robert Mitchum is a movie monster in Hunter, as Harry Powell (“Preacher Harry Powell,” he once corrects a judge). Frankenstein really wasn’t scary and Dracula was only marginally seductive. The creatures or slashers of today’s films aren’t even meant to scare or seduce (to startle is quite a different matter than to scare). Harry Powell burns up the screen and terrifies all at the same time. Night of the Hunter would be assured status as a horror classic if that were all there were to it.
But the surprising thing about Night of the Hunter is its complexity. It is so filled with ideas and subtext, that at times it looks about to burst, but stunningly, amazingly stays in balance and never does. Somehow, Charles Laughton is so sure of himself here (in his first and only film as director) that nothing seems even slightly out of place, not a single note is false here–and there are a lot of them.
What is even more remarkable, and what makes Hunter all the more a unique experience, is that the ideas are dealt out not in stuffy or high-minded drawing room circumstances, but in some of the most openly sleazy scenarios old Hollywood produced. Watching Night of the Hunter, one knows clearly why Laughton never directed again; he is skillfully and candidly flaunting all sense of good taste. That the film is still slightly shocking now is further testament to how horrific it must have seemed in some communities when it was new.
Night of the Hunter is all transgression.
We are at an historical disadvantage trying to interpret where this came from. Being Laughton’s first film, and being so fully realized, we can’t look to earlier films to see the seedlings of these ideas, growing up and out.
Powell’s story is only the surface story. That’s not meant to suggest that it is only superficially of interest, or that it is some sub-plot, rather that Hunter has a lot more going on than this particular man and his hunt for some money he believes a pair of orphans may be hiding. (Really, though, we sense that he is out to harm these children more deeply, more psychically than simply getting the money from them, even violently; Powell is the devil here. He is spiritual terror. The money is of no real concern, to him or the children.) Allegorical stories always risk losing interest in the metaphor and descending into purely didactic means, or on the other hand, getting so wrapped in the matters at hand, obfuscating the message.
Night of the Hunter succeeds in making a horror film, a truly scary nightmare world of adulthood, where children can’t see or decode all the signs around them and adults speak of things that children don’t sense, feel, or know of yet, as part of real life. Listening to the way the adults in this film speak in coded language about lust, greed, and proper behaviors, one gets the sense that no child in his right mind would want to grow up and join this uneasy, insecure, shifting place.
All the dialogue here, spoken by adults, is coded, euphemistic and ominous. It is at that terrifying point in life when one becomes aware that people say things other than they mean, to convey more that what is said, but one hasn’t figured out the codes yet. As a young child, like young Pearl, one hasn’t gotten to that point. One doesn’t yet understand that a man’s posture, his very way of hanging his hat on his head means something. It is terrifying for John, Pearl’s brother and protector, that he has figured out that the world is filled with meaning he doesn’t understand; meaning that he knows an interpretive mistake will destroy him.
The night here is the night between childhood and adulthood when new feelings new desires awaken in the body and one comes crashing against the world’s codes and mores without the knowledge to negotiate the new.
It would be easy–but superficial–to view Night of the Hunter as a religious tract, an old-timey religion’s reply to our decadent and lustful world. Many of the characters here are in that mind frame (the revival Shelley Winters attends is one of the more horrifying moments in the film), but that is milieu of the film, not its message. The reactionary sexual politics of today’s slasher films (teenagers who have sex, especially good, fun rambunctious sex with random partners, meet with horrifying ends; their virtuous counterparts who abstain, or use sex only to express deep love, triumph) is absent here. There are frank talks about sex from old marrieds, and a lustful teenager who isn’t brought to swift ruin by her errors. In fact, the lustfulness isn’t even regarded by her spinster guardian (who freely quotes the Bible at any possible opportunity) as all that sinful.
Rather, it seems that Night of the Hunter’s morality is more textured than at first blush.
So, all of this is to say that after five or more close viewings, I’m not in a position to give a final, sure analysis of what The Night of the Hunter means. But I am assured that it is worth the effort. But, as stated above, it is no effort at all to watch. It is, in the end, a rare delight, a restorative (to me, at least, when my faith in cinema begins to flag) experience.
HDFEST RATING:
Overall: A+
Acting: A+
Originality: A+
Enjoyability: A+
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