Margo - help - Night of the Hunter

Redhot, why don't you want my opinion on the film?

---

I don't know, I never saw it.

---

Haha. matt you are one funny fella.

Either, actually.

But one of those is on my list of things to see. Can you guess which one?!?!?

---

Hey, very good! 10 points for Redhot! (And 5 for JoeyJoe, just because)

---

Stop it! I just had ice cream and now you're gonna make me go BACK to the fridge???

EVIL, YOU ARE!! PURE DELICIOUS EVIL!

---

I bought a cast recording of The Night of the Hunter (the musical) awhile back...and it seems kind of odd and incomplete. I like some of it, but this thread made me wonder if the musical is based on the movie or what?

bump, bump, bump, bump, bump it up ( I don't know what possessed me to write that, but.........what can I do? )

---

My brief weigh in, although I am obviously NOT Margo. This was a purposefully and completely stylized production and considered very 'artistic' for its time. Meant to look and feel melodramatic and praised by some because of that very stylized feel.

I might also note that many films of that time were produced and directed in a style that would be laughed out of the theater today. The techniques used ranged from stiff, flat line delivery in some films, to sweet syrupy music overlays to engender emotional responses. Relationships were rarely believable and the research on professional jobs (like lawyers and psychiatrists) was pitifully absent in a lot of cases, making the storylines dated and laughable today.

But there are films that stand out for their meticulous preparation and more believable production and direction values. I think, because we have changed our expectations of film so much over the past 2-3 decades, it is hard to revisit some of these with the same passion. Compare 'Cape Fear' with Mitchum with DeNiro's 'Cape Fear' performance and tell me which is more frightening. BUT if that film had been produced that way in Mitchum's day, audiences would have been totally overwhelmed. It was a more innocent time and one in which 'art' was seen in a very different way.

---

I do agree with you that her performance seems somewhat out of sync but perhaps Gish (who was seen as exotic and stylized anyway) was thought to be over the top enough as she was.

Her performance did stand out because of the difference in approach but then from what I know of the Gish legend she did her own thing and wasn't inclined to change it because of a different in the tone of the direction or the piece.

---

I think SamIAm mostly covered this already, but "Night of the Hunter" was a highly stylized neo-noir film which was very experimental for its time -- so much so that it flopped at the box office, was panned by many critics and ended Charles Laughton's directing career before it even began. I think you and JoeyJoe were disappointed because you were expecting something completely different from what Laughton was trying to achieve. It's not supposed to be scary or naturalistic -- there's too much of an undercurrent of humor, even camp, for it to be that (remember that Laughton was a rather flamboyant closeted gay man and the film in some ways reflects his larger-than-life personality).

Agee wrote this film to be a sort of child's nightmare of being chased by a bogeyman in the dark. Laughton employs some of the techniques of 20's German expressionism, as well as 40's film noir to give the film a sort of overheated through-the-looking glass quality, an ethereal absurd fantasy, full of symbolism and potent images, just like a particularly vivid dream.

The acting is intentionally over-the-top at times in keeping with the overall style of Agee's premise and Laughton's sensibility. Mitchum gives the most dynamic and out of character performance of his entire career. Known for being mostly somber and wooden in nearly all of his other films, here, he's playing a child's vision of the bogeyman, speaking in a cartoon southern drawl, bugging out his eyes, and overemoting all over the place, you all but expect him to look into the camera and yell "Boo!" Shelley Winters is the very picture of downtrodden and bedraggled domesticity. Gish is a sort of grounding influence on the film, the symbol of pure good in contrast to Mitchum's vision of evil, and her more modulated realistic performance is intentional (ironic considering her background as a silent movie queen -- one would think she'd be more over the top than the rest).

The cinematography and art direction are stunning making the overall experience of this film a unique and powerful one. It's a dark fairy tale laced with camp and humor -- if you watch it with that in mind, I think your experience with it will be much better.

---

Updated On: 9/12/04 at 07:02 PM

Your point about it looking exactly like a stage production at times is an excellent one. The control Laughton and his cinematographers had over each and every shot and "picture" was remaarkable -- there were effects you normally could only achieve in a theatre (and that was intentional). I remember being struck by the catheral image of the shot where Shelley Winters in praying in the attic -- simply gorgeous.

There's so much I could write about this film (though I haven't seen it in a few years). It's truly an anomaly -- there's no other picture quite like it, either before or since, which is why it often defies people's expectations and assumptions of what kind of film it's trying to be (you're not the first to be confused and disappointed by it). That it was Laughton's only film is a crime. His work on this film reminds me of James Whale (another closeted, but flamboyant gay British director), in that it takes a well-established genre (here the "thriller;" with Whale, the horror movie -- Frankensein, Bride of Frankenstein and The Old Dark House) and turns it on its head, imposing a subtle gay/camp sensibility to the proceedings (think of that crazy queen Ernest Thesiger who plays Dr. Pretorius in "Bride"). Nicholas Ray was another one who imposes that sensibility on genre pictures (the lesbian overtones in his western "Johnny Guitar"; the obvious sexual tension between Sal Mineo and James Dean in the classic teen rebel picture "Rebel Without A Cause").

"Night of the Hunter" doesn't easily fit into any of the established genre categories, because there's absolutely nothing about it that is formulaic or by-the numbers -- it's a unique achievement by Laughton (too bad he didn't live long enough to see it rediscovered and acclaimed).

---

Updated On: 9/11/04 at 07:37 PM