"night of the hunter"

she's like a daguerrotype you find in your grandma's dresser or something.

I like that we don't find out why she "lost the love of her son." (Do we?) She's a bit too neatly drawn as the opposite of the harridan who worships Mitchum and does the monologue about how womwn shouldn't marru for sex. Bad Biddy, Angel Biddy.

also "spawn of the devil's own strumpet" is one of my fave things to call kids.

Well, yeah, but from the framing to the script the film is supposed to have the contours of an allegory or a children's bedtime story. I accept it on those terms.

It's important to note that Agee's prose often depicted The Common People in this way.

We don't learn really, no, but it's pretty clear he couldn't stand her being his mother.

yes (no elaboration necessary)

Kind of unusual role for James Gleason as the fisherman lush; he was usually playing boxing managers and the like by the '40s/50s.

I can still hear Mitchum saying "Chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllldreeeeeeeennnn...."

Supposedly he loved working for Laughton on this.

Winters is on screen about as long as I can usually stand her.

One of my favourite movies ever - I watched it for the first time when I was 11 or so and it definitely shaped my taste. My father (big Robert Mitchum fan) approved.
Lillian Gish was at the same time motherly and scary, the elder woman at the groceries' store terrified me.

Lillian Gish was at the same time motherly and scary

Which is sooooo key (one of many, to be exact) to the film's richness.

the reprise of the 'don't! DON'T!' when mitchum is arrested: this was painful enough the first time round, the boy's first don't too reticent and insincere, his second much too stilted and annoying: and it's acted the same way both times. blech.

Acting. Pshaw. Acting is so 2010. Concern for "good acting" has blinded many a viewer to genius cinema. And the condemnations are never insightful, pivoting on some bogus, received notion of verisimilitude. Yawn.

And yeah, if you told me this was the greatest film of all time, I wouldn't argue with you for a second.

For me, this is Stanley Cortez's (Ambersons) film--images and passages that are stunning. The riverboat section seems to come out of nowhere; it's like the film stops for a few minutes so they can make film history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFzTBPy7nl8&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

i love this film so much i can barely bring myself to defend it. i dunno, i'm sure there are things to criticize about it, but none of the criticisms on this thread really ring true for me -- or if they do, i don't see them as flaws. like, the kids undeniably act 'poorly' and woodenly, but somehow that works for me as part of the texture of the film. i sure don't think that more 'realistic' kids would have made the film better.

yeah this is not a Rossellini film.

... and couldn't they have made more realistic sets?!

My kid could have made a better spiderweb.

I wouldn't call the little girl wooden at all--she's other-wordly.

yeah, I'm looking fwd to the doc supplements to see if Cholly had her hypnotized.

Seem to remember that somebody other than he directed the kids, but I'll have to look it up tonight.

I thought I read that Mitchum directed them...? Laughton couldn't stand them.

Pretty sure that's been disproven... from the iMdB:

"Robert Mitchum's autobiography contains many spurious accounts of the making of the film; one, for example, concerns director Charles Laughton, and how he supposedly found the script by James Agee totally unacceptable, rewriting it himself. This has been disproved by the discovery of Agee's 293-page first draft, back in 2004, which is, scene-for-scene, the film that Laughton directed.... Laughton is said to have had no great love for children, and so despised directing them in this film that Robert Mitchum found himself directing the children in several scenes. In reality, Laughton obsessed over ever facet of his first feature, including getting the performances of every actor (even the children) right; this would lead to him dismissing one actor, in particular, after all of his scenes had already been shot and starting again with another in the part."

also, look up Eric's review of the Criterion re the 2nd disc, which shows Laughton at work via outtakes etc.

And yeah, if you told me this was the greatest film of all time, I wouldn't argue with you for a second.

OTM

i love this film so much i can barely bring myself to defend it.

OTM

that is Mitchum singing... burt a midget on the long shot of the horse on the horizon.

Burt, a midget, stand-in for Robert Mitchum

Agee's 293-page first draft, back in 2004, which is, scene-for-scene, the film that Laughton directed

That seems awfully long!

xpost Burt's right up there with Alan Smithee and the Wilhelm scream in movie lore.

There goes Burt again... don't he never sleep?

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/NightHunter04.jpg

He actually used to post on ILX as burt_stanton, true story.

it did seem like it was plague time for little ones

Acting. Pshaw. Acting is so 2010. Concern for "good acting" has blinded many a viewer to genius cinema. And the condemnations are never insightful, pivoting on some bogus, received notion of verisimilitude. Yawn.

rah!

A couple of years after watching Night of the Hunter, I read this Brothers Grimm's tale, and got the same powerful punch in the stomach:

There was once a little girl who was obstinate and inquisitive, and when her parents told her to do anything, she did not obey them, so how could she fare well? One day she said to her parents, "I have heard so much of Frau Trude, I will go to her some day. People say that everything about her does look so strange, and that there are such odd things in her house, that I have become quite curious!" Her parents absolutely forbade her, and said, "Frau Trude is a bad woman, who does wicked things, and if thou goest to her; thou art no longer our child." But the maiden did not let herself be turned aside by her parent's prohibition, and still went to Frau Trude. And when she got to her, Frau Trude said, "Why art thou so pale?" "Ah," she replied, and her whole body trembled, "I have been so terrified at what I have seen." "What hast thou seen?" "I saw a black man on your steps." "That was a collier." "Then I saw a green man." "That was a huntsman." "After that I saw a blood-red man." "That was a butcher." "Ah, Frau Trude, I was terrified; I looked through the window and saw not you, but, as I verily believe, the devil himself with a head of fire." "Oho!" said she, "then thou hast seen the witch in her proper costume. I have been waiting for thee, and wanting thee a long time already; thou shalt give me some light." Then she changed the girl into a block of wood, and threw it into the fire. And when it was in full blaze she sat down close to it, and warmed herself by it, and said, "That shines bright for once in a way."

Laughton to Winters in the murder-scene outtakes: “Doesn’t matter about the lines; just smile, Shelley, and be seraphic.”

http://littleblogtoo.blogspot.com/2008/08/hunting-down-laughtons-haunting-night.html

on TCM tomorrow night (6/15) at 8pm

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyffearYSg1qcay1ao1_500.gif

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyf612nLEX1qcay1ao1_500.gif

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lydwdwHkzX1qcay1ao1_500.gif

so, Gish fires one shot at Mitchum and he goes squawking into the barn like a cartoon rooster? mysteriously unsatisfying climax, and someone on the Criterion commentary says as much.

That whole sequence is perfectly filmed.

just disappointingly conceived?

Not really disappointing by my estimation.

I regard this as one of the two or three closest things to a perfect movie.

Chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllldreeennnn.....

I MUST see this movie again! Soon.....

I've never really done too much hard thinking about it, but the ending certainly seems deliberate in its effect--Gish's character is certainly as archetypal as Mitchum's in that respect...

Just found the book Night of the Hunter on a bargain table and read it; it's actually very good and it turns out the movie is a REALLY faithful adaptation.

This is true and was trying to remember it when somebody said something similar on the thread about The Maltese Falcon.