The Night of the Hunter is a 1955 American Southern Gothic horror-thriller film directed by Charles Laughton in his sole feature film directorial credit, and starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The screenplay by James Agee is adapted from Davis Grubb's 1953 novel. The plot is about Preacher Harry Powell (Mitchum), a serial killer who poses as a preacher and pursues two children in an attempt to get his hands on $10,000 of stolen cash hidden by their late father.
The novel and film draw on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murder of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The film's lyrical and expressionistic style, borrowing techniques from silent film, sets it apart from other Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s, and it has influenced such later directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, and Guillermo del Toro.
The Night of the Hunter premiered on July 26, 1955, in Des Moines, Iowa, to negative reviews. It became the only directorial feature of Laughton. Over the years, the film has been positively reevaluated and is considered one of the greatest films ever made and a defining film of the Southern Gothic genre. In 1992, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant." French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma selected The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the second-best film of all time, behind Citizen Kane.
Plot Harry Powell is a misogynistic serial killer and self-proclaimed preacher traveling along the Ohio River in West Virginia during the Great Depression. He is arrested for driving a stolen car and serves 30 days at Moundsville Penitentiary. There he shares a cell with Ben Harper, who killed two men in a bank robbery for $10,000. Harper made his children, John and Pearl, promise to never reveal where he hid the money. Despite Powell's attempts to worm it out of him, Harper takes the secret to his grave when he is hanged for the murders.
Upon his release from prison, Powell visits Harper's tiny hometown, where he charms the townsfolk and woos Harper's widow, Willa, a waitress for Walter Spoon and his wife, Icey. Overnight, Powell manages to win the town's trust and weds Willa, but John remains instinctively distrustful of him. Powell suspects that John knows where the money is hidden and threatens him to reveal its location. John accidentally reveals that he and Pearl do know where the money is. After Powell refuses to consummate their marriage, Willa deludes herself that he married her to redeem her soul and begins preaching alongside him in tent revivals. She later loses her faith in him when she overhears Powell threatening Pearl to make her reveal where the money is hidden.
Powell murders Willa and ties her body to a Model T that he sinks in the river, then claims that she left her family for a life of sin when Walter and Icey question her abrupt disappearance. Uncle Birdie, an elderly friend of the family, discovers Willa's body while fishing, but refrains from telling the police for fear that he will be accused of Willa's murder.
Powell threatens the children and learns that the money is hidden inside Pearl's doll. The children escape an enraged Powell and attempt to seek refuge with Birdie, whom they find in a drunken stupor. They use their father's small johnboat to flee down the river and find sanctuary with Rachel Cooper, a tough woman who looks after stray children.
Powell kills a farmer for his horse and eventually tracks them down, but Rachel sees through his deceptions and runs him off her property with a shotgun. He returns after dark. During an all-night standoff, Rachel gives Powell a face full of birdshot. She summons the state police, who arrive and arrest Powell for Willa's murder. John breaks down during Powell's handcuffing, having a flashback of his father's fate. He beats the doll against Powell's struggling body in anguish, spilling the cash.
During Powell's trial John cannot bring himself to testify against him. After Powell's sentencing, Rachel takes John and the other children away as Icey leads a lynch mob toward the police station. Powell is escorted out the back to safety just in time, but the prison hangman vows to see him again soon. John and Pearl spend their first Christmas together with Rachel and her brood of stray children.
Cast
Production
This was the only film solely directed by and credited to the actor Charles Laughton. He had previously been an uncredited fill-in director on The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949), after its original director Irving Allen was removed and before the eventual credited director Burgess Meredith took over. However, Laughton had directed plays on Broadway, most produced by his friend Paul Gregory.
Development Harold Matson, a literary agent, sent a copy of the 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb to Paul Gregory. He sent the book to Laughton, who loved it and described it as a "nightmarish Mother Goose story". Laughton contacted Grubb, and the two of them instantly got along very well. He traveled to Philadelphia, where Grubb lived, and they spent five days discussing ideas for the film. Grubb had studied art in college, so he offered to draw sketches as a form of inspiration. Laughton loved the drawings, and many of them were used in the film's storyboard.
At first, Grubb was being considered to write the screenplay himself, but the studio wanted to hire someone with experience writing for films. James Agee was hired as the screenwriter because he was from the South and had experience writing about the Depression. Agee began writing in April 1954 and finished in June, but his script was 293 pages: much too long for a feature film. Laughton made significant rewrites to the script, and his was the version used for shooting, even though he insisted that Agee be credited as the only writer. Agee's original script ended with a shot of children's faces floating among the stars, an idea that was eventually moved to the opening of the film. Throughout 1954, Gregory worked with the Production Code Administration to change the script to meet the guidelines of the Production Code. There was much concern about depicting a preacher on screen as an evil person, and Gregory made an effort to make the character of the Preacher not appear to be a real, ordained minister. Eventually the script was approved, but Protestant groups who had read the script continued to object to the film's production.
While preparing for the filming, Laughton studied silent films by viewing their original nitrate prints, including The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He wanted to "restore the power of silent films to talkies."
The budget of the film was a little under $600,000, of which about $75,000 was for the rights to adapt the novel.
Casting
Laughton's initial thought after reading the novel was to cast himself in the role of the Preacher, but Gregory convinced him that no studio would finance a film unless they cast someone else. For the most part, he did not hold traditional auditions for the actors; he simply met with them to get a sense of their personalities and whether they were right for the role.
Laughton considered casting Gary Cooper as Harry Powell, but Cooper declined the role as he thought it might be detrimental to his career. John Carradine expressed interest in the Powell role, as did Laurence Olivier, but the latter's schedule was not free for two years. Next, Laughton approached Robert Mitchum: "'I'm directing this film and there's a character in it who is a diabolical shit.' 'Present,' replied Mitchum." Laughton liked Mitchum for the role partly due to his sexual persona, but Grubb was concerned about the character of the Preacher being considered sexual. Laughton told Grubb, "If you want to sell God, you have to be sexy."
Agnes Moorehead, Grace Kelly, and Betty Grable were all considered for the role of Willa Harper. In the end Laughton chose Shelley Winters because he felt she had a vulnerable quality and was more of a serious actor than a movie star; she committed to the role only two weeks before filming began. In her 1989 memoir, Winters described this as "probably the most thoughtful and reserved performance I ever gave".
Laughton's first pick for the role of Rachel Cooper was his wife Elsa Lanchester. Jane Darwell and Louise Fazenda also were considered. Lanchester, for reasons unknown to Laughton, declined the role, suggesting silent movie star Lillian Gish for the role. A doubtful Laughton went to New York for the purpose of watching films in which Gish starred. These included the shorts and feature films she made with pioneer D.W. Griffith. Gish had gotten word of his watching these old movies, and when she asked him why, he replied, "When I first went to the movies, they sat in their seats straight and leaned forward. Now they slump down, with their heads back, and eat candy and popcorn. I want them to sit up straight again."
Filming
Principal photography of The Night of the Hunter began on August 15 and ended on October 7, 1954, a total of 36 days of shooting. Laughton kept the editor and musical composer on set during filming, which was very uncommon at the time. Mitchum originally suggested that Laughton shoot the film in authentic Appalachian locations, but there was insufficient budget to do on-location shooting. Besides, Laughton wanted to create the film's unique look on Hollywood sound stages and found what he was looking for at RKO-Pathé Forty Acres lot, Republic Studios, and the Rowland V. Lee ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Certain cutaway shots and compositing shots were filmed in West Virginia. Laughton hired Terry Sanders as second unit director in order to scout and shoot the river scenes because he had recently directed an Academy Award-winning short film A Time Out of War, which mostly took place on a river.
Rather than shooting with traditional takes, Laughton had the crew only slate at the beginning of each reel of film and let the camera roll continuously until the reel ran out. This was so that he could direct the actors without waiting to reset the camera and sound equipment, not unlike the way silent films used to be directed. Shelley Winters told Laughton she had this image of Willa as being "a fly fascinated by a spider, and she very willingly walks into this web". He liked this image and told her to channel that into the performance. Indeed, a stylized spider and web are seen as the children make their way along the riverbank at night fleeing Mitchum. Mitchum's performance in the film has been described as Brechtian acting, which Laughton had extensive experience with. According to Lillian Gish, Laughton was very unsure of himself on set as this was his first time directing a film, and when someone would give him a suggestion he would start talking about fears that his whole vision was wrong. Laughton's directing style was supportive and respectful of the actors' input and several of the actors have said it was among their favorite professional experiences.