The Night of the Hunter 1955

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Reviews

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• CinemaSerfon TMDB · Mar 20238/10

  Continuing with my quest to establish where or not Charles Laughton ever made a bad movie, I recently came, again, to this - one of my all time favourite films. I remember cowering behind the sofa as a child when this film came on television late in the evening. It all centres around a robber who has hidden $10,000 somewhere. His jailbird pal "Powell" (Robert Mitchum) is out, masquerading as a puritanical preacher, and determined to befriend the man's family and to scoop the loot. Shelley Winters is the naive, now widow, "Willa" who falls hook, line and sinker for the wiles and charms of this shrewd and duplicitous man - and that does not go at all well for her! Soon the children "John" (Billy Chapin) and his sister "Pearl" (Sally Jane Bruce) are in mortal peril. Can they escape his clutches? Where is the cash? Is there any cash? For me, this is easily the best effort on screen from Mitchum, he just oozes a malevolence that is palpable. The two kids, too, are on great form - managing to deliver performances that stay on the right side of petrified hysteria as we all begin to appreciate the accumulating sense of menace. A big screen on a rainy night with a drop of red wine and this

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• John Chardon TMDB · Sep 201910/10

  Laughton crafts a nightmarish fairytale that stands up now as a true masterpiece. A religious maniac marries an idiotic widow and mother of two children in the hope of finding out where the $10,000 is hidden that the now executed husband and father garnered from a robbery. Upon release back in 1955, the critics of the time kicked this first directorial effort from Charles Laughton to such a degree he never directed again. Watching the film now and observing the tide of praise for it as each year goes by, one can only hope that those critics were rounded up and sent to a faraway island to learn about how to view with open heart. The Night Of The Hunter is to me quite simply one of the greatest films ever laid down on the screen. Firstly you have to ask yourself exactly what genre the film belongs to? That alone should lead you to find out that the film is something different, even unique, because it covers so many bases. Perhaps that is what the critics back then couldn't quite fathom? Is it Crime? Is it a Thriller? Horror, Drama, Noir, even a terrifying mother goose fairytale (that last one was Laughton's terming of his masterpiece), truth is, is that it's a multitude of earthly tr

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• daniel whiteon TMDB · Mar 2016

  The only film directed by the great English actor Charles Laughton, "The Night of the Hunter" is a brilliant allegory about the battle between good and evil. The film failed upon its release but is now considered a classic. Robert Mitchum has never been better as the malevolent "preacher" who marries the hapless Shelley Winters. Mitchum had been in prison with Winters husband and knows there is money to be had from a robbery the deceased husband committed, but where is it? Though Shelley falls under Mitchum"s twisted religious zeal, her children a little boy and girl instinctively know this man is bad, bad, bad. Spoiler alert: Shelley Comes to a watery end and the children must flee from Mitchum who has discovered the money is hidden in little Pearl's doll. After an arduous journey mainly by boat (the Ohio river?) John and Pearl come to rest in the saintly arms of the magnificent Lillian Gish. But Mitchum is relentless in his pursuit and that is when the eternal battle between good and evil is fought one more time. I will not reveal which side prevails but let's just say for an old broad Lillian is a formidable opponent. A film I saw as a young boy it left an impression on me that

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Pairings

Companions we picked from the closest works, and how to take them.

• Double bill withTouch of Evil1958
• Watch afterPsycho1960

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