Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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86 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A dark journey on the river of dreams..., September 28, 2001
There are images in Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton's only film as a director, that will sear themselves into your brain and haunt you the rest of your life. That's not hyperbole; this film is simply that potent.Nothing about Night of the Hunter is "realistic" or even plausible - not the plot, not the dialogue, not the behavior of the child characters, not the photography. Yet, Night of the Hunter transcends realism utterly to do something far more challenging than merely create a simulacrum of reality. It creates a waking dream - a vivid hallucination of fearsome beasts, tragic heroines, children in peril, and ultimate redemption. It succeeds as a modern fairy tale in the darkest tradition of the brothers Grimm. Even comparisons to German expressionist cinema of the silent era (apt though they are) diminish the singular, elemental power of this film. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu are stunning, but it's hard to imagine either of them getting under the skin in quite the same way. The plot centers on the evil machinations of Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), a murderous, psychotic "preacher" who does time with bank-robber Ben Harper (Peter Graves), father of two young children (Billy Chapin - brother of Father Knows Best star Lauren, and Sally Jane Bruce). Before being taken away by the police, Harper hid the money he stole and swore his children to secrecy about its location. No one else - not even their mother Willa (wonderfully played by Shelley Winters) - knows where the money is hidden. But after Ben Harper is hanged for the murder of two bank guards killed during the robbery, Harry Powell makes it his business to find out. Thus begins a cinematic odyssey like no other, filled with stark symbolism and eerie imagery. Perhaps the most unsettling image is the celebrated shot of Willa's corpse in the river, strapped into a car, her hair billowing out in the water like the aquatic plants that surround her. It is one of the strongest images in all cinema - comparable to the baby carriage racing down the Odessa steps in Battleship Potemkin, or the eyeglasses landing on the snow-covered battlefield of Dr. Zhivago. The central sequence is a boat journey that the children take down-river in an attempt to escape the evil preacher. Though obviously filmed on a sound stage and filled with incongruous and frankly theatrical moments, the overall effect is nearly overwhelming in the way it evokes childhood fears of abandonment and pursuit. Every time I see it, I fall completely under its spell. Stanley Cortez's breathtaking black-and-white cinematography is complemented by Walter Schumann's atmospheric score. There is a moment during the river journey when Pearl (the little girl) begins singing a children's lullaby. The orchestra swells and turns the song into a dreamy, meditative piece of night music - filled with dread, sadness, and awe. It's not at all realistic, but if that scene doesn't give you chills, then you're just made of stone. It is fitting that Lillian Gish plays the children's savior, the elderly Mrs. Cooper - a righteous woman with a steely constitution. Gish was there for the birth of cinema itself. Her presence in Night of the Hunter is like seal of approval, a testimony to this film's enduring status as a classic. My only reservation with this otherwise superb DVD is the warning at the beginning that "This film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your TV". Either that's flatly untrue (as Night of the Hunter looks perfectly at home in 4:3), or MGM has cheated us by not giving a true American classic its due.
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39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Wherefore By Their Fruits, Ye Shall Know Them...", June 14, 2004
From the novel by Davis Grubb - the first and only film directed and purportedly written by the flamboyant and swashbucking actor, Charles Laughton. In Robert Mitchum's biography, he stated that Laughton found the script by James Agee (co-writer of the African Queen) totally unacceptable. Laughton paid off Agee, sent him packing and rewrote virtually the entire script himself, uncredited.This 1955 melodrama cum Grimm's Fairy Tale is brilliantly directed, acted, scored and the cinematography by Stanley Cortez is breathtakingly creepy and beautiful all at the same time. Mitchum plays the sexually repressed, thieving, lying, cheating and quite sociopathic Rev. Harry Powell. The ol' Rev. got caught in a stolen vehicle while watching a "hootchie cootchie" dancer in a burlesque establishment and is sentenced to 30 days in the state penitentiary. It just so happens as fate takes a turn that the scheming Rev's bunkmate is in the clink for killing two men and robbing a bank of over $10,000.00 that has never been recovered. The Rev. tries to get the "sinner" to tell him where the money is hidden but the man won't budge. The man is hanged for his crime, the Rev. is let out of jail and goes to find the man's wife, played by Shelley Winters, his two young children and , of course, the loot! The Rev. even marries the young widow to get to the money and many evils ensue... Lillian Gish turns in a wonderful performance as a benefactor of the children. I don't want to spoil the premise of the movie as other reviewers have done. Just know that it's a horror/fairytale/melodrama/satire all rolled into a great piece of filmaking! If you liked Mitchum in "Cape Fear" you will love him as the sociopathic Rev. Powell! Happy Watching!
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, June 29, 2001
By A Customer
I first saw this movie with my sorority sisters on tv in the sixties, and it scared all of us to death. I can remember very clearly the scene where Shelly Winters is underwater with her hair floating upwards, and it still gives me chills. What scared me most was that all the characters were nightmarishly unreal except for the boy and Lillian Gish. Even little Pearl wasn't realistically written...what child can sing the way she does in the floating boat? Later, thanks to a viewing of "The Lusty Men," I became a real fan of Robert Mitchum and never missed an opportunity to watch him. Whether playing a moonshiner in "Thunder Road" (incidentally, I know all the words to the song, too!), to watching end-of-career interviews on AMC, I saw them all. Many of the reviews I have seen online of this movie("Night of the Hunter") make much of the fact that James Agee wrote the script. In an interview Mitchum said the original script by Agee had to be completely rewritten by Charles Laughton who got absolutely no credit for it. He also said the German Impressionist look to the movie came about for the same reason original German Impressionism was invented: no money! The really creepy scene where the boy says "Don't he ever sleep?" while looking out the window at Mitchum's silhouette on the horizon is an optical illusion. That's really a midget on a pony inside a sound studio, photographed to look like a long shot of Mitchum. The budget was miniscule for the movie because nobody wanted to invest a lot in Laughton's initial directorial effort.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
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For those of you who have commented about this wonderful film being out of print... that is actually a good thing.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
don't take your kids to this?
A black and whiter film noir classic that borders on horror.
The preacher character played by Mitchum is a very Frankenstein like creation.
Published 8 months ago by R. Bagula
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5.0 out of 5 stars
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5.0 out of 5 stars
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I put this movie in the class of suspense thrillers, that have a strong moral foundation. There is a heartwarming ending that is akin to another favorite movie of mine, "It's a...
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4.0 out of 5 stars
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The Bottom Line:
Night of the Hunter falls apart to a degree once Lillian Gish gets on screen and turns everything into a simple parable, but for the first hour or so...
Published 9 months ago by One-Line Film Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
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For non-traditional holiday films I would suggest Night of the Hunter be added. This is an older film starring Robert Mitchum, Shelly Winters and Lillian Gish.
Published 9 months ago by Robert E. Bower
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