The Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum in a phenomenal,
chilling performance) is anything but your typical preacher. He’s a conman who swindle widows out of money. When he learns from a
fellow inmate on death row that he’s left some money behind at his home, he
leaves prison with the desire to claim the money. He woos the widow, Willa Harper (Shelly Winters), and marries
her.
Ageism is major theme of The
Night of the Hunter. The real protagonist of the film is the son, John (Billy Chapin), who
despite his protestations can’t seem to convince his mother or anyone else that
the preacher is up to no good. Even the preacher tells the boy that “it’s my
word versus yours. No one is going to believe you”. And so the boy continues to
persevere.
Chapin gives a surprisingly assured performance. It’s not one
completely marked by cutesy or whimsy, and both John and his sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) are put through deeply
trying and difficult circumstances.
His father (Peter Graves) told him to keep the location of the money,
inside his sister's doll, a secret, and he holds onto this secret for the
love of his father. Pearl on the other hand is slowly becoming ingratiated to
the preacher, who has an abundance of charms and an uncanny ability to use religious
scripture to win anyone over, including a now infamous example re-appropriated
for Do the Right Thing describing the
war between love and hate.
The preacher is a wily one. He wins over the townspeople,
including the mother’s close friends and employers, who tell her that she needs
a new husband. He plays her to a tee, refusing sex on their wedding night by
claiming that he’s here to help raise the children and nothing else. The mother
soon finds herself a devoted religious follower; she yells out speeches about
staying true to scripture and how the preacher has shown her the way of the
righteous.
By the time she’s wised up, matters have gotten far out of
hand. He kills her and the children are left in an even more precarious
situation than before. It’s an incredibly nerve-racking film where it feels
like something could go wrong at any moment (and in a number of instances
certainly does). The calculated, shadowy imagery (that beautifully contrasts
scenes of night and day) ramps up the tension. Night scenes have an eerie,
surreal quality and there are scenes that take advantage of their studio set
nature to form disturbing, jaggedly framed shots reminiscent of German expressionist
films such as The Cabinets of Dr. Caligari.
Walter Schumann's score serves to heighten every moment even further. While
sometimes the score is overblown, during the intense cat-and-mouse moments the
score parallels the action perfectly.
The film is underscored by significant religious undertones.
The woman, Rachel Cooper (Lilian Gish), who will later become a major figure in the film, and actually believes
in the religious views she’s preaching, starts the film in talking head-like pose
against a dreamy, starry background discussing “wolves in sheep’s skin”, a
fitting description of Mitchum’s character. Powell manipulates the religious
language for his own gains, but the film doesn’t buy into his mocking of
scripture. In fact, the film seems to be set in a very moral universe where
actions have consequences and tend to be punished in the long run.
Though the ending feels a little like a cop out, everything
up to that point is superbly shot and acted. It’s a frightening, mesmerizing
film that’s still thrilling and riveting.
Grade: A
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