Both had negligent backgrounds behind the camera before debuting with masterpieces that broke contemporary convention to muted reception, only to later find their audience and then set convention. In another Criterion extra, mini-doc The Making of The Night of The Hunter, Feeney goes so far as to describe Laughton and Welles as “spiritual blood brothers.” There is more to link these two filmmakers than their shared work with Cortez. Feeney, archivist Robert Gitt, and Preston Neal Jones author of Heaven and Hell to Play with: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter.Īt more than one point, the assembled commentariat compare Laughton to Orson Welles The Night of the Hunter cinematographer Stanley Cortez had shot Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). How can you talk about the directorial influence of this film when Laughton has no further filmography to compare The Night of The Hunter to? Not that this has made academics reluctant to engage packaged in the film’s Criterion release is an audio commentary where the film’s second-unit director Terry Sanders is joined by academics from a range of disciplines: critic F. Much of academic film discourse is rooted in auteurism, which makes talking about The Night of the Hunter such a challenge. The wind blows and the rain’s cold, yet they abide… they abide and they endure.”īased on the identically named 1953 novel by Davis Grubb, The Night of the Hunter is unfortunately Charles Laughton’s only contribution to cinema made from the director’s chair. The children’s caretaker gazes into the camera and offers the film’s final wisdom before the conclusion: “Lord save little children. No longer hunted by Powell, young John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) spend Christmas Eve with their new guardian, Rachel (Lillian Gish). In the final scene, the thesis of the film is stated plainly with words and eyes directed toward the audience. To understand The Night of the Hunter (1955), this review will begin where the film ends. Once Powell’s sentence is up, he descends upon the Harper family, seducing the now-single mother Willa (Shelley Winters) so he can find the money for himself. Doubling the Harper family’s misfortune, Ben’s cellmate Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a killer disguised as a preacher, gets word of what his companion is in for. That vow ends up being the parting words for father and children, as Ben is hauled away to death row. Hiding the money in his daughter’s doll, Ben swears his two children to secrecy, intent that the stolen sum will be their inheritance. In Great Depression-era West Virginia, Ben Harper (Peter Graves) kills two men while robbing a store. Production Company Paul Gregory Productions. The children’s guardian and their hunter cross paths as Rachel (Lillian Gish) and Powell square off.
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