"They abide and they endure" - Mrs. Cooper in The Night of the Hunter
Being born at the turn of the 20th century, Charles Laughton's career was largely as an actor. He has worked in movies as early as the 1930's, with a few short films earlier in 1928. He has been credited for a handful of writers credits as well as producing credits. His directing credits have gone more often than not uncredited. This is the only movie he has worked on as director that has been credited to him in his 30 plus year career. With a writers credit also, Night of the Hunter stands to be an amazing testament to his abilities for story telling through film.
Based on the Davis Grubb novel of the same name written in 1953, this movie portrays a murdering priest that finds his victims while in prison listening to death row criminals about their remaining families. This story and subsequent movie was based on events taken from headlines from Grubb's hometown of Moundsville, West Virginia.
As for the headliner, Robert Mitchum, he was the show's main attraction. As the underhanded Harry Powell, he got to play the worst type of bad guy in my opinion: a crooked preacher that kills women for their dead con husband's stolen money. If there's an example of two wrongs don't make a right, it's certainly this one. The children in the story are fully aware of this from the beginning and Father Powell doesn't want to have anything of it. When anyone is around he and the children he's just as nice as a summer's day, but get him alone with the boy and he's on him to spill the beans as to where the stashed money is with dangerous results. Mitchum has been on both sides of good and evil in other movies, but this character was such a memorable bad guy, with his tattoos on his finger and the story that he told to go with 'em, that I really felt for the kids.
When the kids take off down the river alone, their story seemed hopeless til they came to the old mother hen, played by Lillian Gish. She took in the kids as if they were her own from the moment she saw the two. This wasn't her first time taking in stray kids. She was very skeptical from the moment she heard of Mr. Powell's appearance. It took one word from John to get her to see what a wicked man Powell really was.
This story of good versus evil takes it's twist at the end with a juxtaposed picture of the evil preacher signing sweet songs staring down the house where Mrs. Cooper sits with a shot gun in hand to protect "Her" children from harms way. And just like a mother duck and her chicks, they all fall in line walking home after the trial of Mr. Powell just in time for Christmas.
Of the killers we've seen this week, Mitchum's character didn't favor the gun as did others, including Arthur Frantz's The Sniper. He used the switchblade when he wanted to do his dirty work. But as a whole, there was something very sinister about each of the men hunting down women or children in these films. As a part of film noir, the heavy dark aspects are played til the end of the movies teetering the balance of good versus evil until the very end, where the audience is never quite sure who's going to be the victor. In the case of Night of the Hunter, the children (innocence) wins as they are rewarded with a new family.
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