The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films: Part Two

Peter Hoskin and Matthew d'Ancona

4 July 2009

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Peter Hoskin and Matthew d’Ancona count down the final 25 of The Spectator’s 50 Essential Films

No.1
The Night of the Hunter
(Charles Laughton, 1955)

Peter Hoskin and Matthew d’Ancona discuss The Spectator’s number one film, The Night of the Hunter

Md’A: So: The Night of the Hunter. What are we thinking, Pete? A black-and-white Fifties cinematic curiosity, directed by an actor who never directed again, which was received with pretty lukewarm reviews at the time? I mean: how exactly did that end up as The Spectator’s all-time favourite film?

PH: I actually think you’ve hit on most of the reasons there. Fifties Hollywood is an incredibly rich, even experimental, period in film history — just watch Singin’ in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard, The Searchers, Johnny Guitar, Track of the Cat or a hundred other films to be sure of that — but, even then, The Night of the Hunter stands out from the crowd: a ‘curiosity’ as you put it. It’s an oddly beguiling mix of noir thriller, fairytale and folk drama that I just don’t think any other film has ever matched, or even thought to try. That it was Charles Laughton’s first and only film as director just amplifies its allure and uniqueness. And that it was neglected by contemporary audiences and critics, while being more or less widely celebrated now, suggests how forward-looking it was.

Md’A: And he is using such simple material, such a simple story. It’s set in West
Virginia in the Thirties: Mitchum is the unnamed ‘Preacher’ — famous for the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tatooed on his fists — who preys on weak women. He learns in jail from Ben Harper (Peter Graves) that he has stashed the money from a robbery somewhere and — once Preacher is released and Ben is hanged — weds Ben’s widow Willa (Shelley Winters) in the hope of finding it. The plot hinges on his murder of Willa, pursuit of her children and final confrontation with the awesome Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper, who emerges as the guardian angel figure and Preacher’s providential nemesis. So simple. And yet within that framework Laughton is pushing so many boundaries: grafting a German expressionist aesthetic on to D.W. Griffith’s American pastoral, mixing up the grammar of film noir with the morality of Perrault’s fairytales. Amazing ambition.

PH: Yep, there’s a lot crammed in there. So much, in fact, that The Night of the Hunter feels like a distillation of film history. It really is a cineaste’s delight. Of course, Laughton had been part of that history for decades, only in front of the cameras, working with some of the greatest directors and producers in the business. You do have to wonder how much he was informed by that cinematic upbringing when it came to directing his own film. I can’t help but see parallels with The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932): a Universal horror film in which Laughton plays a bumbling aristocrat, and which features a similar blend of fantasy, pitch-black humour and dread. The same may be said of other Laughton vehicles like The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939) or Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932). He’d certainly come into contact with monsters before Preacher rode onto the scene.

If you wanted to stretch the point, you could even say that Mitchum and Gish brought their own cinematic baggage — Gish as the typical heroine of Griffith’s epics, and Mitchum as the defining face of film noir. To some extent, Laughton’s got them playing their own archetypes, which is just one reason why the performances are so strong and multi-layered.

Md’A: What about its influence? I think the magic realism of the film, especially the scenes on the river, were very important to all subsequent films that explored the boundary between dream and reality. I’m even thinking of a film like Taxi Driver, but also (more obviously) directors such as David Lynch, Almódovar, Lars von Trier and so on. As for Preacher, is there a scarier villain in all cinema? I like to think he could take on Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecter, De Niro in Cape Fear and Joe Pesci in Casino all at once! I think The Night of the Hunter is very much a beginning as well as an end in the history of film.

PH: All very true. Although I think its freshest, and possibly most influential, conceit is how it calls on the audience to do more than idly watch, how it asks us to invest in the cinematic illusion. Let me clarify. While it’s certainly a film for adults, so much of The Night of the Hunter is from a child’s eye view. We’ve mentioned the fairytale aspects, of course, and also that two of the main characters are children. I think Laughton is challenging us to look at his film with the wonder of youth: to fear Mitchum as the bogeyman, to love Lillian Gish as the kindly aunt, and to thereby feel the full resonance of this dark fairytale. Given the limp contemporary reaction to The Night of the Hunter, you’ve got to wonder whether Fifties audiences were quite ready for it.

Md’A: Truffaut said, I think, that The Night of the Hunter was a horror story seen through the eyes of children and that, for me, is its most audacious aspect. As you say, the boldness of this strategy probably passed most contemporary audiences by. But watch the scenes in The Shining seen specifically through the eyes of the psychic child and you know where their ultimate roots lie. In sum, I’m really thrilled we have chosen this particular film. For me, it encapsulates all that’s best in cinema. It’s an eccentric, provocative choice, for sure. But you’d expect nothing less from The Spectator. Wouldn’t you?