What’s the greatest one-hit wonder by a director in film history, equivalent in a literary comparison to sole standout novels like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights for being an exceptional singular creation? The correct answer is, of course, The Night of the Hunter, helmed by acting legend Charles Laughton and originally released 70 years ago this summer.
In a career-defining performance, Robert Mitchum plays sinister preacher-turned-serial killer Harry Powell, who marries widow Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) while secretly searching for stolen money hidden by her late husband. After Willa's murder, Powell relentlessly hunts her two children, John and Pearl (Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce), who flee downriver to escape him. They eventually find refuge with the fiercely protective Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), who stands between them and Powell’s malevolence.
To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The Night of the Hunter, conducted earlier this month, click here (if you get an error message, simply refresh the page). To hear the latest Cineversary podcast episode celebrating the 70th anniversary of this film, click here.
Many critics seem to assign greater significance to Night of the Hunter as a horror movie or thriller, with Pauline Kael describing it as “one of the most frightening movies ever made,” and Roger Ebert agreeing, calling it “one of the most frightening of movies, with one of the most unforgettable of villains.”
Hunter is both unique and innovative in its experimental tonality, blending horror and crime picture aesthetics with Mother Goose fairy tale sensibilities, the small-town Americana imagery and sentimental humanism of Frank Capra (especially the Christmastime conclusion), Looney Tunes-style cartoonish comedy, and the dreamlike and fantastical narrative style of Jean Cocteau (reminding us of films his Beauty and the Beast from 1946). There’s even a likely unintentional nod to John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath in the hardscrabble scene where the children beg for food from a wary mother.
Yet, despite its macabre iconography and chilling unease, Hunter curiously neutralizes the horrific elements with levity at times. “Maybe the most radical aspect of The Night of the Hunter, and its least appreciated virtue, is its sense of humor,”
wrote Criterion Collection essayist Terrence Rafferty. “More conventional horror movies overdo the solemnity of evil. The monster in The Night of the Hunter is so bad he’s funny. Laughton and Mitchum treat evil with the indignity it deserves.”
Interestingly, you can also regard this picture as a chase film, a coming-of-age movie, and a religious allegory. Certainly, it artfully blends a variety of cinematic styles and aesthetics. Essayist Matt Mazur
wrote: “Deeply embedded into The Night of the Hunter's DNA, the viewer finds German expressionist director Robert Wiene's hypnotically designed 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's graphic, bucolic sets; the Biblical Southern Gothic epic as perfected by Griffith; the family film; the supernatural mystery; noir; melodrama; and serial killer pop art of the '50s.”
Hunter still resonates thanks in part to its disturbing visual subjectivity and stylized vantage point. The narrative plays as a kind of Grimm’s fairy tale, and, although Cooper is our voiceover narrator, the primary point of view is the children’s; many shots and scenes appear simplistic, exaggerated, or distorted because we are meant to see the story through more innocent, inexperienced eyes.
"It's really a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale we were telling," director Charles Laughton said in an interview. "We tried to surround the children with creatures they might have observed, and that might have seemed part of a dream. It was, in a way, a dream for them."
Consider how the sets often look artificial, dreamlike, and unrealistic; this is a world untethered from any particular time or realistic place – giving the movie more of a timeless feel and look.
The character of Powell endures as one of the most unsettling and indelible in the history of cinema – although he often appears intentionally as comically monstrous and absurd, consistent with the fact that we are viewing him primarily through the eyes of John, who perceives him as a literal monster. Ruminate on how upsetting this villain and the film overall would’ve been to 1950s audiences, especially in its implicit and explicit violence directed at children and women.
This became Mitchum’s most iconic role and, arguably, his finest performance. Appreciate how effectively the actor uses his vocal cords, as evidenced in the unsettling way he repeatedly sings Leaning on the Everlasting Arms and calls out to the children with a creepy, singsong quality. The inner rage he expresses is palpable, especially in the striptease scene where he clenches his “hate”-knuckled fist and violently springs his pants pocket-cutting switchblade to life. In some scenes, Mitchum adheres to dramatic realism; in many others, he acts like a buffoonish Frankenstein monster, a cartoonish Big Bad Wolf, and a primitive beast who yelps, grunts, and howls like a wounded animal when thwarted or attacked.
The river journey sequence remains the film’s extraordinary and exquisite centerpiece – its imagery dreamlike and nightmarish yet also soothing. The tiny critters that foreground the frame visually loom large but also seem to be watching them indifferently, suggesting perhaps that nature is a neutral observer in their struggle or that these helpless, exposed creatures can relate to their dilemma.
Night of the Hunter is a fascinating case study of a cinematic phoenix that rose from the ashes – becoming a “reclaimed” classic years after being abandoned by audiences, much like Citizen Kane and It’s a Wonderful Life. The film was a financial flop when first released in 1955, but was reappraised by critics and scholars decades later. Laughton’s film is beloved all the more today because, like the orphaned children Cooper embraces, new generations have adopted it as one of their favorites.
As fine an actor as he was, it’s fair to wonder if Laughton missed his true calling as a superlative director. Ponder over the smart filmmaking choices he makes, particularly the casting of Mitchum, Gish, and Winters as characters that fit our expectations of these actors at this time: Mitchum playing on his bad boy image, Gish parlaying her persona as a legendary actress in the autumn of her years, and Winters embodying yet another vulnerable, emotionally needy female whose yearning for love and security tragically results in her murder or heartbreak.
Laughton certainly turned lemons into lemonade; restricted by a low budget, he shot the film primarily on sound stages at Samuel Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood within a controlled environment, utilizing painted backdrops, stylized lighting, and expressionistic set designs. The director often opts for storybook fantasy and exaggeration over realism. Cases in point: There’s no practical way Powell put Willa’s body and the car into the middle of the river; Pearl’s singing of the haunting folk song Pretty Fly is obviously voiced by a skilled adult singer; and Powell’s many hyperbolic gestures and over-the-top sermonizing ooze artificiality.
The director employs several memorable overhead aerial shots, as well as interesting directionality in the narrative by having the children move from left to right during their river escape, but then suddenly shift from right to left when they encounter Cooper, possibly suggesting that you have to face your fears and break from old habits. Curiously, the scene that introduces Cooper is composed of three successive shots where the characters move left but the camera remains static instead of panning or tracking the camera along their route.
Per Slate reviewer Elbert Ventura: “Laughton’s refusal to be reductive can be easily missed because of his movie’s apparent simplicity. But though it harks back to simpler forms of expression, The Night of the Hunter complicates all that it touches—Laughton keeps undercutting the movie it could have become. Its Capra-esque platitudes by themselves can be mawkish; sitting next to images of stark surrealism, they bloom into moving affirmations of American innocence amid American corruption.”
Deep Focus Review essayist Brian Eggert
is equally enamored: “Laughton made a picture that does not reveal every facet to the viewer upon first viewing; instead, the first watch only implants a desire to explore it further. The film percolates with memory and time, cultivating a place in the unconscious mind, one watch after another, until it becomes fixed. The effect is comparable to Welles’ Citizen Kane, in that Laughton’s directorial debut constructed a film so masterful, so complex, few viewers could fully appreciate its full effect in its day. The film proves so uncommon that it demands further assessment just to understand the many ways it deviates from the norm.”
Laughton and his collaborators also deserve credit for being unafraid of angering audiences in rural America, the South, or the Bible Belt with this film’s not-so-subtle indictment of religious hucksters, gullible churchgoers, and thickheaded hicks.
Many insist this is the first Southern Gothic horror movie. A subgenre of Gothic fiction set in the American South, Southern Gothic uses decaying settings and grotesque characters to explore madness, violence, and the dark undercurrents of Southern society, including racism, religious fanaticism, and moral hypocrisy. Notable authors in this tradition include William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Tennessee Williams, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, and Eudora Welty. Southern Gothic-tinged fright films and thrillers that came after Night of the Hunter include Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), Spider Baby (1967), Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), The Beguiled (1971), The Evictors (1979), Angel Heart (1987), and Skeleton Key (2005).
Cape Fear (1962) draws heavily from The Night of the Hunter’s visual language and ominous mood, with Mitchum reprising a variant of his infamous, sinister role in the original. Other movies that may have been inspired by this movie’s plot, characters, or unique visual style include Elmer Gantry (1960), Whistle Down the Wind (1961), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).
Powell’s violent attitude toward female sexuality and young children would’ve certainly been controversial in the mid-1950s. Directors like David Lynch, Guillermo del Toro, and Terrence Malick embraced the concept of endangered innocence set within eerie, otherworldly landscapes. Del Toro echoes the unsettling contrast between youthful purity and the sinister, often predatory forces of the adult world in The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006); Malick’s Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) both reflect Laughton’s lyrical, mythic approach to storytelling and the apathy of nature to human struggles; and David Lynch’s fascination with blending idyllic American imagery and surreal menace owes much to this picture, which was a clear influence on the dreamlike dread of Blue Velvet (1986) and Twin Peaks.
Martin Scorsese has long credited The Night of the Hunter for influencing his use of stylized lighting, moral allegory, and striking visual framing, qualities especially evident in Cape Fear (1991) and Shutter Island (2010). Night of the Hunter (1955) also motivated directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Robert Altman, whose films, such as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and Nashville (1975), reflect its use of symbolic imagery, psychological depth, and genre-blending, with a focus on the tension between innocence and corruption.
The Coen Brothers have acknowledged The Night of the Hunter as a key influence on their work, as well, with its offbeat menace and mythic storytelling tone resonating throughout films like Raising Arizona (1987) and No Country for Old Men (2007); recall, too, the similar corpse found on the river’s bottom in The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). Spike Lee directly referenced The Night of the Hunter in Do the Right Thing (1989), reworking the famous "LOVE" and "HATE" monologue through the character of Radio Raheem as a commentary on duality and human nature.
True Detective (Season 1) captures a similarly haunting blend of eerie Americana, Southern Gothic atmosphere, and moral unease, clearly tracing its mood and visual style back to The Night of the Hunter. And Stephen King’s novel The Stand also contains two major opposing “good versus evil” characters who somewhat mirror Night at the Hunter’s grandmotherly Cooper and the malicious Powell: Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg, respectively.
Works that preceded but likely inspired Laughton and his team include The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Frankenstein (which also features a lumbering monster with outstretched arms and a torch-wielding angry mob), and the early feature films of D.W. Griffith and his leading lady, Gish.
At its heart, Night of the Hunter examines the timeless struggle between two opposing forces: good and evil, love and hate, innocence and corruption, children versus adults, and paternal authoritarianism versus maternal compassion. In both a literal and figurative sense, Hunter is about “light and shadow,” as cinematographer Stanley Cortez put it. Powell and Cooper stand on opposite sides of this spectrum and battle for the lives and souls of the two children. Powell’s story of the right hand versus left hand reinforces this thematic fight. But remember that he wields a switchblade, she a shotgun; Powell brings a literal and metaphorical knife to a gunfight and is destined to lose.
Hunter also stages an Old Testament versus New Testament showdown. Consider the many spiritual and personality contrasts between Powell and Cooper. His twisted brand of faith embraces fundamentalist old-time religion, the kind in which a wrathful God sits in judgment and sinners must be immediately punished; Cooper, on the other hand, invokes the name of Jesus when she sings the lyrics to Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, and she demonstrates a much more compassionate and forgiving piety.
Laughton’s film lingers, too, as a haunting parable of the vulnerability and resilience of children. Cooper reminds us of both the fragility and sturdiness of kids, remarking: “It’s a hard world for little things,” but later saying, “When you're little, you have more endurance than God is ever to grant you again. Children are man at his strongest. They abide.” Recall how, especially during the river journey scenes, the children are foregrounded by or adjacent to several small or vulnerable animals, including frogs, turtles, rabbits, sheep, and cows. We also see predatory wildlife and larger beasts – a spider, fox, owl, and horse – in stealth mode.
Ponder the many examples of absentee or neglectful parenting in this story, as embodied in the clueless Willa, who puts her husband ahead of her offspring; the prison hangman father who comes home too late to tuck in his children; and even Icey Spoon, who enables and defends Powell to the detriment of Pearl and John. Ironically, the responsible adult figures – Cooper and Uncle Birdie – are two seniors with no biological children of their own to care for, but who serve as surrogate moms and dads to John and Pearl. Cooper regards herself as a “strong tree with branches for many birds. I'm good for something in this world, and I know it, too.”
Beneath its shadowy surface, Hunter also warns of the dangers of overzealous religious fundamentalism and sanctimonious Bible thumpers. When asked what creed he preaches, Powell says, “The religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us,” unashamedly revealing that he’s a creative dogmatist who twists Christian doctrine to suit his own ends. The film begins with the opening words “Beware of false prophets” for a reason: A lapsed Catholic, Laughton sought to expose the hypocrisy within organized religion, shaped in part by the personal oppression he experienced as a closeted gay man in 1950s society. He aimed to challenge the self-righteous and reveal how spirituality and religious faith could be manipulated by charlatans and hypocrites for selfish, immoral ends; but he was also acknowledging that, in the hands of sincere believers, it could serve as a genuine force for compassion and moral good. Many see this work as more of a scathing denunciation of blind zealotry than it is an attack on religion overall.
This film also works as a dark study of unhealthy, repressed, or warped sexuality and female subservience. Ms. Spoon’s treatise on marital sex is quite revealing: “When you've been married to a man for forty years you know all that don't amount to a hill of beans. I've been married to Walt that long and I swear in all that time I just lie there thinkin' about my canning… A woman's a fool to marry for that. That's somethin' for a man. The Good Lord never meant for a decent woman to want that. Not really want it. It's all just a fake and a pipe dream.” Powell tells Willa on their honeymoon night: “You thought, Willa, that the moment you walked in that door, I'd start to paw at you in that abominable way that men are supposed to do on their wedding night. Ain't that right, now? That body was meant for begettin' children. It was not meant for the lust of men!” Willow responds with a prayer: “Help me to be clean, so I can be what Powell wants me to be.”
Man’s animalistic nature is a further thematic undercurrent. Powell often behaves like a predatory, violent animal in this film. It’s humorous that, after scaring him off with her shotgun, Cooper calls the state troopers and says, “I got something trapped in my barn,” referring to Powell as if he were a cornered and wounded coyote.
For all its darkness, this work is also a testament to the power of redemption, specifically how Ruby is morally restored by the end of the film. Earlier, she’s tempted by teenage boys and the sweet talk of the slick preacher, susceptible to sexual opportunists and pregnancy; but by the conclusion Ruby shifts from an endangered sheep to a loyal member of the flock.
Night of the Hunter’s greatest benefaction to audiences is the abundance of unforgettable images carefully crafted by Charles Laughton and his ace cinematographer Stanley Cortez. Many of these visuals reveal the heavy influence of German expressionism, noir, and horror, as evidenced by the chiaroscuro lighting scheme, sharp architectural angles, and minimalistic set designs. Cortez even uses a single candle as a source of light to maximum stylistic effect in some shots. Stunning visual highlights include the opening sequence where the face of Cooper and her surrogate children appear in the heavens; the foreshadowing image of the thundering locomotive; the bedroom scene of Willa’s murder, with its stylistic, knife-sharp shadows making the room appear like an unholy chapel; the episode in the charcoal black cellar, with its sharp diagonal staircase; the exaggerated shadows Powell casts across walls; the high-contrast silhouette shots of the preacher on horseback; the hauntingly beautiful underwater visions of Willa’s throat-slit corpse; the fantastical river journey the children take by johnboat; the scene where the kids are fast asleep and the camera tilts up to the heavens, revealing the artificially glittery stars that dissolve into the morning sun; and the shadowy singing showdown sequence pitting Cooper against Powell.
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