What a Frightfulness

The Night of the Hunter (1955) is a classic American Gothic nursery tale.

First heard in a dark cinema, the opening bar of Joel and Ethan Coens’ True Grit (2010) made the hair tingle on the back of my neck. 

There is nothing sinister about the tune. The Coens are connoisseurs of the American Songbook and their theme, the Victorian gospel workhorse “What a Fellowship,” also known as “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” is a model of earnest American revivalist inspiration.

“Preacher” Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) and Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) “Come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves” at a church social on the river.

But they also season their work with allusions to film classics. My shock in recognizing the hymn was the clear allusion to the 1955 classic The Night of the Hunter. In that film, the hymn’s refrain “Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms” is baritoned as a leitmotiv by a charming, darkly menacing sociopath in black. It is a simple tune, easy to remember. This context is hard to forget.

Relentless demon Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) casts a menacing shadow in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Shot in Moundsville, West Virginia, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter was based on a literary true-crime story about a serial murderer of women published two years earlier by Davis Grubb, set in the Depression-era Appalachians. Out-of-luck Ben Harper (Peter Graves) has killed two people while robbing a small-town bank of $10,000 (roughly $100,000 today) so as not to see his two small children, John (Billy Chapin, age 10) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce, age 5) join the bands of homeless, hungry waifs hard times had made.

Depression-era waifs on the road in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Written by James Agee, known for his “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” (1941) which documented the lives of Depression-era Alabama sharecroppers, the film opens with a short Sunday school lesson to children by the character we meet later as Miss Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish). Miss Cooper quotes Scripture in a voiceover as Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez’s images introduce the story on-screen.

Miss Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish): “I’m a strong tree with branches for many birds. I’m good at something in this world and I know it.” The Night of the Hunter (1955).

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits… A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit… Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matthew 7:15-20)

“Ravening wolf” Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum): “You say the word, Lord, I'm on my way.”

Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) is a corrupt tree, a sociopathic religious intolerant who comes not in peace but with a switchblade. He uses the language of the King James Bible to woo and impress church-going, small-town folk. But arrested for stealing a car, “Preacher” Powell does not impress the judge who gives him 30 days in the lock-up. Next we see Ben Harper’s arrest through his children’s eyes: Daddy gets home enough ahead of pursuing state troopers to hide the money with John and Pearl before four troopers arrive and subdue him. Ben is sentenced to hang for the two murders incident to the robbery.

Ben Harper (Peter Graves) stays mum with prison bunkmate Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Although unlikely that a misdemeanor car thief would share a cell in a state penitentiary with a death row inmate, this is how Powell crosses paths with Harper. Powell twigs that Harper hid stolen money but cannot get him to say where it is before he is executed. When Powell gets out, he loses no time making a move on Harper’s family. He pretends to be the prison preacher in whom Harper confided. He “converts” and marries Ben’s widow Willa (Shelley Winters) as he skulks menacingly nice after John and Pearl.

“Preacher” Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) “converts” and marries Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Winters deftly underplays the role of a tragic “straight man”. (She would fare little better parenting with “Hum, baby” in Lolita seven years later.) She is the mother of the children who are the antagonist’s quarry and, as a widow and victim, she is the focus of the town’s righteous chorus led by the shrewish Icey Spoon (Evelyn Varden). Besides the children, the only detail we know about Willa’s marriage with Ben Harper is that a Confederate general (Nathaniel Bedford Forrest?) watches over the bed they shared. She looks forward meekly with faith to a fulfilling union with the dark, handsome Man of God.

This eerie dissolve is among many exquisite shots and edits in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

To avoid spoilers, circumstances force the children to take flight on the river pursued by their relentlessly menacing demon. The river delivers them to Miss Cooper mentioned above, perhaps irresistibly, as they appear as though in an American folk rendition of “an ark among the flags at the water’s brink.” They take refuge with this godly, tough-love, self-sufficient senior to set up the dramatic showdown.

Ruby (Gloria Castillo) and Miss Cooper (Lillian Gish) scrub their “two more mouths to feed”, Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) and John (Billy Chapin) in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Laughton shot the film in black-and-white in that German-Expressionist-inspired style known as film noir. A number of shots and editing transitions are exquisite. But Laughton adds a dimension to “noir” by posing a Manichean duality: Powell’s malevolent darkness contrasts with Cooper’s wakeful, stern-but-loving lightness. This Manicheaism dramatically stands out when Cooper, guarding her lambs with a shotgun at the film’s denouement, sings “Lean on Jesus” in gospel antiphon to Powell’s “Leaning” refrain and first stanza, “What a fellowship...”

Miss Cooper (Lillian Gish) sings in gospel antiphon to Harry Powell’s (Robert Mitchum) relentless gospel leitmotiv in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

This is unfortunately the only film directed by Laughton, a fine stage and film actor and theatrical director, and one of the few screenplays by the writer and film critic James Agee. Each, though noted in his day, has been better appreciated posthumously. Nor did their film do well at the box office, though it too has become a classic. 

“I come not in peace but with a sword.” Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), John (Billy Chapin) get a life lesson from “new daddy” Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) in The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Mitchum, playfully diffident offscreen, has few peers when it comes to onscreen menace. A large, solidly-built man with dark features and hooded eyes, he radiates a “don’t give a damn” charisma which with his dominating physicality combines menace, sexuality, and playfulness in ways that made him an icon of 1940s and 1950s film crime dramas. Mitchum’s Max Cady in the original Cape Fear (1962) is a more intense, sexually-aberrant version of Powell in this film. 

John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) keep steps ahead of their “new daddy” (Robert Mitchum).

Gish holds her own here. She established herself early in the silent era and starred in such classics as D. W. Griffiths’s Broken Blossoms (1919) and Victor Sjöström’s The Wind (1928). She reportedly learned to shoot from Al Jennings, a real-life train robber who later played one in movies (and longtime friend of O. Henry whom he met in prison). Gish made her characters strong from her earliest films to her last, The Whales of August (1987), in which she costarred with Bette Davis—and in which “bumpy night” seat belts undoubtedly were standard equipment. She died aged 99 in 1993. 

Miss Cooper (Lillian Gish, who learned to shoot from old-time train robber Al Jennings): “He ain’t your daddy, and he ain’t no preacher either.” The Night of the Hunter (1955)

The Night of the Hunter 1955 U.S. United Artists/MGM (92 minutes). Directed by Charles Laughton; screenplay by James Agee and Laughton from the novel by Davis Grubb; cinematography by Stanley Cortez; editing by Robert Golden; music by Walter Schuman; produced by Paul Gregory.