There are a handful of films that I will watch again and again, because every screening is just like the first time. One of these is Charles Laughton’s dark southern gothic fairytale, The Night of the Hunter (1955). Even though I know the story so well, I am knotted up with fear, and hostage to the dread and panic that the children John and Pearl experience right up until the end. It is Laughton’s sharp contrasting of dark, light and shadows, Robert Mitchum’s menacing performance as the serial killer Preacher Powell, Billy Chapin’s resolute, but so vulnerable portrayal as young John, and Shelley Winter as Willa Harper, their weak and mystified mother who is blind to the fact that she has married a murderous man, whose only love is money.
The knuckles of Preacher Harry Powell’s left hand are tattooed with H-A-T-E and his right hand’s with L-O-V-E. He loves to demonstrate his seductive version of medicine show con art in the form of a sermonette he calls “the story of life”. He pretends his hands are battling each other in a wrestling match, the struggle between good and evil, love and hate, his inner warring demons. In his story L-O-V-E always wins, but in Harry’s life H-A-T-E wins every time.
In contrast to Harry Powell’s evil is Rachel Cooper: an elderly, but strong and loving woman who has lost her only son, who takes in all the stray children who come to her door begging in this Great Depression. She feeds, clothes and nurtures, giving them little jobs, steady enduring love and understanding. “It’s a hard world for little things.” She teaches a kind and loving Christianity to the children in contrast to Preacher Powell’s brimstone and damnation.
Veteran actor Charles Laughton was enthralled with Davis Grubb’s 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter, describing it as a “nightmarish Mother Goose story”. He was very excited to create and direct his first film, wishing to “restore the power of silent films to talkies”. Laughton studied silent films by viewing their nitrate prints, including Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He hired on James Agee as screenwriter. Agee hailed from the South and had experience writing about the Depression. Producer Paul Gregory worked with the Production Code Administration to meet its strict guidelines as there was concern about depicting a preacher as an evil person.
Laughton thought to cast himself as the preacher, but no studio would finance the film without a younger major star. Gary Cooper turned it down, Laurence Olivier (though interested) was unavailable, but Robert Mitchum was very eager for the part and rendered an impressive audition that won him the role (many would say, the finest of his film career). For the role of Willa Harper, Laughton considered Agnes Moorhead, Grace Kelly and Betty Grable. In the end he chose Shelley Winters because she was a more serious actor, less of a movie star. His first choice for Rachel Cooper was his own wife Elsa Lanchester, but she turned down the role and suggested silent movie star Lillian Gish. Gish was a veteran of silent cinema and a protégée of legendary director D.W. Griffith, and brought a wealth of experience and gravitas to the film. At the age of 61, she was dominating in the role of Rachel Cooper, a no-nonsense, compassionate woman who takes in orphans and protects them from harm.
Hilyard Brown as art director brought Laughton’s vision of angular 1920s German Expressionism to the film’s settings. The “chapel-like” parent’s bedroom, the barn and buildings along the river that look like paintings, the shot of John looking out of the barn’s hayloft in the middle of the night and seeing Preacher Powell on horseback, a silhouette on the horizon (in my mind one of the most terrifying scenes in the film), where John states, of the preacher’s relentless pursuit of the two innocent children, “Don’t he never sleep?”
On its release the film was a failure with both audience and critics, which Charles Laughton took very personally: he never again attempted to direct a film. Over time, The Night of the Hunter has been reassessed and recognized as a classic. It began as a cult film with a small group of fans, playing revival cinemas. Its popularity grew as a new generation of children were exposed to the film when it played on television. In the 1970s, many critically positive articles were written about the film. Roger Ebert wrote, “What a compelling, frightening and beautiful film it is! And how well it has survived its period. Many films of the mid-1950s, even the good ones, seem somewhat dated now, but by setting his story in an invented movie world outside conventional realism, Laughton gave it a timelessness. It is one of the most frightening of movies, with one of the most unforgettable of villains, and on both of those scores, it holds up… well after four decades.”
The Night of the Hunter is fearsome, haunting and alluring: you can’t help but watch it again and again, to the very end. Join us at the 2025 Vintage Film Festival to see the one and only film created by Charles Laughton on Saturday, October 18th at 9:25 pm at the Capitol Theatre, 20 Queen Street, Port Hope, Ontario.