The Night of the Hunter

Director: Charles Laughton
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish, Shelley Winters, Billy Chapin
Runtime: 92'
Year of Production: 1955
Language: English
Subtitles: Greek

One of the most enchanting and wildly beautiful creations ever made, «The Night of the Hunter» is also the only film to bear the directing signature of a great actor who was disheartened by the cold indifference of the public and critics of the time and has never picked up a camera since. Adapted from Davis Grubb's namesake novel, with a screenplay written by the brilliant writer and film critic James Agee and Laughton himself, the film tells a paradoxical nightmare with biblical implications: In a small American town during the Great Depression, a pastor infatuates a lonely mother and widow with his beautiful preachings, carefully hiding his murderous intentions before unleashing a death hunt on her two young children. Using the archetypal conflict between good and evil as its basis, «The Night of the Hunter» does not overturn it but gives it mythical dimensions and a timelessness that makes the story seem as if it came from some very distant past. The psychotic pastor, the deluded woman, the innocent children who will be forced to grow up prematurely, the elderly protector of seemingly all the weak, all inhabit a world of dense shadows, disguised demons and hidden angels that seems to have sprung from the pages of a gothic fairy tale. Not coincidentally, Laughton will resort to a stunning expressionist aesthetic that progressively submerges heroes and viewers into a mystical nightly universe whose grand alchemist is none other than Stanley Cortez, one of the leading cinematographers who here captures some of the most dazzling and haunting images we have ever seen. From the devilishly seductive figure of Robert Mitchum and the words LOVE and HATE written on the fingers of his hands to the eerie sight of a woman lying dead on the bottom of the sea, the ghostly scenes slipping further and further away from realism, the skies full of stars that seem to hide so many mysteries within them, or the poetic (on the verge of shock) descent of children into the river, under the watchful gaze of creatures of the night, each of these scenes evokes indescribable emotions and chills, connecting us to subconscious fears, childhood anxieties and dark dreams that remain deeply rooted within us. A masterpiece without equal in cinema. Loukas Katsikas

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