- Feb 5, 2002
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FILM REVIEW: Classic film’s madman chases two little children across bleak black-and-white landscape.
If Flannery O’Connor wrote screenplays, she would have written something like the 1955 Southern Gothic tale Night of the Hunter. Modern viewers of this film can go on a scary sojourn of discovery.
What they will find is both disturbing, inspiring and, yes, even spiritual. Not exactly what one would expect from a film that has, at its core, the story of a psychopathic serial killer chasing two small children across the Deep South during the Great Depression.
The film has many unique qualities. It is the only film ever directed by the great British actor Charles Laughton. James Agee, a film critic, poet, short fiction writer and someone who died way before his time, wrote the screenplay. The only other screenplay attributed to Agee was The African Queen (what a duo of credits!).
The singular detour Night of the Hunter makes, though, is having its biggest star in the film play the villain, not the hero. A critic once asked James Stewart if he ever got tired of always playing “Jimmy Stewart.” Stewart’s quick retort was, “Who do you want me to be? Cary Grant?” So, for a star of the magnitude of Robert Mitchum to take on the role of Harry Powell, a sinister killer with a homespun preacher fetish, was shocking then — as it still is.
Continued below.
‘Night of the Hunter’ Is the Stuff of Nightmares: Movie’s Scary Sojourn Examines Good vs. Evil
If Flannery O’Connor wrote screenplays, she would have written something like the 1955 Southern Gothic tale Night of the Hunter. Modern viewers of this film can go on a scary sojourn of discovery.
What they will find is both disturbing, inspiring and, yes, even spiritual. Not exactly what one would expect from a film that has, at its core, the story of a psychopathic serial killer chasing two small children across the Deep South during the Great Depression.
The film has many unique qualities. It is the only film ever directed by the great British actor Charles Laughton. James Agee, a film critic, poet, short fiction writer and someone who died way before his time, wrote the screenplay. The only other screenplay attributed to Agee was The African Queen (what a duo of credits!).
The singular detour Night of the Hunter makes, though, is having its biggest star in the film play the villain, not the hero. A critic once asked James Stewart if he ever got tired of always playing “Jimmy Stewart.” Stewart’s quick retort was, “Who do you want me to be? Cary Grant?” So, for a star of the magnitude of Robert Mitchum to take on the role of Harry Powell, a sinister killer with a homespun preacher fetish, was shocking then — as it still is.
Continued below.
‘Night of the Hunter’ Is the Stuff of Nightmares: Movie’s Scary Sojourn Examines Good vs. Evil
