"night of the hunter"

I think the film has inspired even better films: Badlands for example. And that haunting "Two little children..." song was used in a recent French movie, The Devils.

Why didn't Laughton direct again?

Having finally picked NOTH up and seen it -- The Haunting (original Robert Wise version) is far more the flat out scarier, but NOTH is definitely unsettling, and as noted its cinematography is grand.

Sure is, and it's a great transfer, so I think. Damn skimpy on anything extra, though, which is a shame -- the original trailer, some brief notes in the booklet, that's about it.

"this time it'll be a privilege!" [tips hat joyfully)

the owl and the rabbit

this is oz the movie!!

Thrillers that end on a note of unexpected and unabashed optimism (NotH, Femme Fatale) = even more shocking?

Prima fissy - i dont think it's funny at all - i can't understand that.

Would make a great thread.

those kids are awful.

He wouldn't have done what Laughton did with the material. What would Welles have done with any material. This is a straw man argument.

the woman in the water, of course, the woman in the water.

when mitchum is abt to kill the woman, the shot switches from a close-up view to a shot of the full room, which because at night is bordered in black. i suppose i can't really articulate why this shot is so remarkable.

and one i hated:

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.

i really love the singing all throughout this film too: is that really r. mitchum's voice?

haha oz the movie! i don't see it but i want to!

are welles and laughton similar? when were they around? what's 'touch of evil' like? at all similar?

Maybe partly because the scene is so obviously shot on a sound stage and he not only doesnt attempt to hide the unreality of the thing but actually accentuates it. I suppose thats pretty radical for its time.

anyway memory sux, i got it on tape so maybe tomorrow

Two points - set design and river sequence alone make this a keeper.

and which do i watch most

As for the river sequence, the pure Moses/Homer/Aesop/Brothers Grimm gels there perfectly. It's like a cohesion and perversion of every twisted bit of children's literature. Which also goes to show how perverse the genre is enough that (in my view) censorship is a moot point when we let children read things like that which are just as grotesque. (Which to me is fine - it's the censorship that I'm patronizing.)

(another good thread idea.)

Passion of Joan of Arc got some soft support, Sunrise (my personal guess) nearly came out on top, but in the end we had settled on Night of the Hunter. Now I have to open the question back up among my chums.

There, now destroy that one you ciniphile-nihilist fuckers!

For a second I thought you were talking about "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" and was confused.

― Cunga, Tuesday, 20 July 2010 23:20 (8 minutes ago)

i read that

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000282PO.jpg

I watched the Criterion last night, and there's no doubt it's a superbly crafted religious-fable-meets-Big Bad Wolf film, but something about it still bugs me. Mostly Lillian Gish.

I'd forgotten that Shelley is only onscreen for maybe ten minutes; I wonder if her agent approved.

I also prefer about ten Mitchum performances to this one, even though he's indelible.

Like that all the animals-in-the-foreground shots pay off with the owl attacking the bunny.

Haven't watched the extras yet, but I presume the helicopter shots were Stanley Cortez's idea?

nice going assholes!
― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, January 1, 2004 7:33 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Still think people who don't like this movie are assholes, for the record.

and one (scene) i hated:

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.

I think, despite the woodenish style the boy had like nearly all child actors of that era, the reprise scene was really the emotional climax and worked beautifully.

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

I haven't seen the film in years and never check it out of the library because it's always there. When I first saw it about twenty years ago, I hadn't seen Gish's other films, so I allowed myself to get spooked and transfixed by her unusual screen presence. Whatever she does, I couldn't take my eyes off her.

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.