MFP, The Night of the Hunter
General information
Directed by Charles Laughton, English actor, and director (the Night of the Hunter is the only
film he directed)
Produced by Paul Gregory.
Screenplay by James Agee (American writer and poet)
Based on The Night of the Hunter, a novel by Davis Grubb
Edited by Robert Golden
Director of photography/ cinematography: Stanley Cortez
The plot
Harry Powell, a self-declared, self-anointed preacher and serial killer of widows is ironically
arrested for car theft. As an inmate in Moundsville Penitentiary, he finds himself sharing a
cell with Ben Harper who is on death row for heisting a bank. Powell overhears Harper
talking in his sleep about the money he stole and hid. After Harper is hanged for his crime,
Powell is released from jail and is determined to lay his hands on the money. He starts
wooing Harper's widow, seduces her into marrying him and starts hunting for the money.
Evil in the movie: a highly relative notion
"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 a corrupt tree can bring forth good fruit", King James Bible, Matthew 7: 15.
Obviously, the embodiment of the false prophet, and the epitome of evil in the movie is
Reverend Harry Powell. He is a serial killer of widows who has somehow lost count of his
murders. At the beginning of the movie, he reckons he has killed 12 of them. Well, at the
end, we learn he has actually slain 25! But the serial killer dons the attire of the man of God;
he is also a seducer. Not only does he seduce Willa (Ben Harper's widow), but he also
seduces little Pearl, Ms Spoon (Willa's employer), Ruby (one of Ms Cooper's girls) as well as
the whole community of the townspeople. By the way, once he has killed Willa and dumped
her body into the river, he manages to trick everybody into believing that Willa has run off
with another man and abandoned her family: quite a feat indeed, but also the typical
strategy of what is now called the narcissistic abuser. However, to justify his deeds, Harry
Powell finds a perfect vindication in the killings in the Bible: if the Good Book is full of
killings, if God himself wanted Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, why shouldn't he kill?
Among the other characters, evil also appears as a relative notion.
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MFP, The Night of the Hunter
Although Ben Harper robbed a bank, he has moral values. His motive for his armed robbery
seems legitimate: he did what he did because he was sick of seeing children sinking into
deep poverty because of the Great Depression. He wants his revenge on what Franklin
Delano Roosevelt called "the malefactors of great wealth", that is to say, the bankers and
stockbrokers (now called traders) who sought for ever more profit: doesn't that ring a more
recent bell?
Ben Harper, however, is not the only other character presenting this coexistence of good
and evil. Perfect Ms Cooper, who welcomes all the children roaming the roads, who is both
firm and understanding with the children she raises, has completely lost touch with her own
son. The nice welcoming townspeople of the beginning of the movie turn into a wild bloodthirsty throng at the end, poised to lynch a man. Are the latter any better than the preacher?
Hardly so! And let's not forget the cruelty of the children chanting "hing, hang, hung" to
Pearl and John when they hear that their dad has been hanged!
This ambiguity, this constant struggle between good and evil coexisting in each human being
is conveyed in the photography and its use of black and white and of light and dark.
Black and white, light and dark: the language of the movie.
The use of black and white, of light and dark by director of photography Stanley Cortez is
never gratuitous. Beautiful as the photography might be per se, its function is not purely
aesthetic, it is also a signifier, a sign carrying meaning.
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MFP, The Night of the Hunter
The sharp contrast in light and dark in the shot in which Powell is about to kill Willa gives the
penthouse room the appearance of the nave of a church. Willa is lying on the bed as she
would in her grave. While she is awaiting death she looks as though she were already dead.
There is a shaft on light on her as if she had been touched by God's grace and redeemed
from her sins, beaming in the tongues of flame of Pentecostal epiphany (revelation). This
beaming light sharply contrasts with the dark suit of the preacher, her executioner.
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MFP, The Night of the Hunter
The downward shot (or high angle shot) showing Willa dead at the bottom of the river seen
from the point of view of Uncle Birdie is reminiscent of Ophelia in Hamlet, by William
Shakespeare, floating down the river. This is all the less surprising as Charles Laughton was
obviously quite familiar with Shakespeare's plays.
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MFP, The Night of the Hunter
This scene in which Powell threatens to slit John's throat in the cellar over a barrel of apples
rings a bell with the scene in which the young hero is hiding within the barrel of apples in
Stevenson's Treasure Island, the typical initiation and experience novel.
And this is no wonder as this motion picture is also a rewriting of the initiation or the
experience novel, and to be more precise, the experience novel of Americana.
"Reconnoitering1 the land", the experience novel of Americana.
After the preacher has killed their mother and threatened to kill John, the children are
coerced into fleeing. The river: "there's still the river" and the skiff are their salvation, and
here they are drifting down the Ohio river through an impressive downward shot (through
the spider web), seen from the point of view of wild animals (the owl, the tortoise, the
rabbits). The river plays a key part in the movie: not only does it "wash sins away", to put it
in Victor Lucas's (PSI student) words but it is also an element of regeneration and rebirth as
it leads the two children (as Moses) to their new surrogate mother, Ms Cooper.
For nature is on the children's side: it protects the children —brambles, mud and water
hinder Powell from getting at them— and it brings them to a safe place (Ms Cooper's house
and barn). The echo to the story of Moses in the Bible is here obvious and is by the way
evoked by Ms Cooper.
That is however not just it. By drifting along the river, the two children are unwillingly and
unwittingly reproducing the experience of the great historical figures who first surveyed and
1
The word "reconnoiter" means to inspect; to survey a territory. It can be used in a military context but it was
also used in relation with the Conquest of the West.
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MFP, The Night of the Hunter
mapped the American territory: Lewis and Clark who from 1804 to 1806 travelled west along
the Missouri, the Yellowstone and the Columbia rivers all the way down to the Pacific Ocean,
or even, way earlier, Henry Hudson who in 1609, sailed down the river which now bears his
name for the Dutch East India Company. But John and Pearl are also sailing in the wake of
famous American fictional characters who are more or less their age: Mark Twain's
Huckleberry Finn2 of course, escaping his drunken and bullying father with Jim, a runaway
slave, on a raft drifting along the Mississippi.
The beauty of the scene is enhanced by the song sung by little Pearl.
The score (the music)
The music plays an essential part in the motion picture. Songs such as the credits song
"dream, my little one dream", or the song illustrating the children's drifting down the river
"once upon a time, there was a pretty fly…" echo the children's experience.
Hymns such as "leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all harm" or "bringing in the sheaves"
are central to the movie. Not only do they refer to the question of religion but they also can
be interpreted completely differently according to who sings them. When it is Harry Powell
who is singing, as one of the students pointed out (Ekouevi from ECT1), the hymn sounds like
an ominous threat: as you said, it is a way for Harry Powell of saying "I'm here, I'm coming".
When it is sung by Ms Cooper, the song really carries its meaning of protection from harm.
And the final duet in which Ms Cooper and Harry Powell are singing in a round indeed
conveys this struggle between good and evil carried out using the very same words.
2
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885. Samuel Langhorne Clemens is the real name of Mark Twain. The
expression "mark twain" (mark two) refers to the depth at which the Mississippi becomes sailable.
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