NIGHT OF THE HUNTER , 1955
Reuben (Discotarantula here) once described Night of the Hunger as an anomaly in the history of film. He meant that it does not belong to a film movement, or to any sort of historical progression in film; it seems to have become a film in spite of history, and in spite of its own troublesome birth (Reuben, please accept my apologies for this paraphrase, and please please weigh in in the comments and correct/put more eloquently what you meant!) I think he had to study the history of its production in an early film class in college.
Personally, I can't understand why any Professor would assign for study this movie's production history, especially in an Intro to Film class, unless it was to warn Freshmen just how much could go wrong in film production. I have purposely never looked into the infamous story of its conception and its many bumbling progenitors, mainly because I don't give a crap. Rumors abound and even they are too much. Everything is evident enough in the film itself.
It's edited choppily, written wordily, and flirts shamelessly with physical comedy in the very moments it pretends to horror.
It is a Hollywood Failure, and a great film.
Its production isn't all flubbery. The music, a combination of diagetic and non folk/religious hymns and lullabies coupled with classical music for the "action" scenes, is used with great precision. Robert Mitchum's evil preacher is almost always played onto the screen by an over-the-top "bad guy" horn riff, while the lullaby that Pearl sings in the boat plays in various classical iterations when the brother and sister are on screen together. The characters define themselves and are defined by the songs they sing on screen, from drunk Uncle Bertie plunking away at his off-key banjo, to Lillian Gish raising her voice to harmonize with the hymn Mitchum sings as he besieges her house. Not only are the characters identified by the music, but their relationships to each other and to the world around them gain clarity through the songs in ways that the dialogue often obfuscates (delightfully, and with folksy eloquence).
Other cool things about Night of the Hunter:
- The Expressionist set design is super "artsy" but sort of out of place, which gives me the delightful feeling that it is there just for the fun of it. Like Tears of a Black Tiger is about color, or Speed Racer is with CGI.
- Nothing is resolved lightly, or particularly happily. Even the shmaltzy Christmas ending leaves you wondering if Gish's extra affection for the boy isn't tinged with the loss of her own son, or even some icky attraction to the too-strong and too-mature boy.
The best example of this avoidance of trite is when Mitchum's character is taken by the police and the boy cries and breaks down at the sight.
The movie is not particularly obscure, and I'm sure most people in this community already have formed an opinion about it. I'm more interested in getting to the comments than in talking more about the film here. I'll gush one more idea and then squat by my computer, waiting for discussion:
If you watch this film as a sort of critique of history - say specifically of the Great Depression, which is when I picture it taking place - I think that its general hypothesis is actually stated by Lillian Gish's character: "It's a hard world for little things." This sort of colloquial philosophizing has always struck me as the sort of inquiry into the world that film does best. Movies aren't academic papers, nor do they have the length and detail of communication that can characterize novels, but they can provide us with handfuls of off-the-cuff meanings and emotions, from which we are free to construct narratives that exist more in our own lives than in any tangible document. What I love so much about this movie is that it presents itself entirely in the language of off-the-cuff shots, lines of dialogue, songs, and plot developments, all of which can (if you want them to) add up to a narrative about how hard it is to be little in the world. Which is a silly thing to say, of course, unless you're Lillian Gish with a shotgun.
Personally, I can't understand why any Professor would assign for study this movie's production history, especially in an Intro to Film class, unless it was to warn Freshmen just how much could go wrong in film production. I have purposely never looked into the infamous story of its conception and its many bumbling progenitors, mainly because I don't give a crap. Rumors abound and even they are too much. Everything is evident enough in the film itself.
It's edited choppily, written wordily, and flirts shamelessly with physical comedy in the very moments it pretends to horror.
It is a Hollywood Failure, and a great film.
Its production isn't all flubbery. The music, a combination of diagetic and non folk/religious hymns and lullabies coupled with classical music for the "action" scenes, is used with great precision. Robert Mitchum's evil preacher is almost always played onto the screen by an over-the-top "bad guy" horn riff, while the lullaby that Pearl sings in the boat plays in various classical iterations when the brother and sister are on screen together. The characters define themselves and are defined by the songs they sing on screen, from drunk Uncle Bertie plunking away at his off-key banjo, to Lillian Gish raising her voice to harmonize with the hymn Mitchum sings as he besieges her house. Not only are the characters identified by the music, but their relationships to each other and to the world around them gain clarity through the songs in ways that the dialogue often obfuscates (delightfully, and with folksy eloquence).
Other cool things about Night of the Hunter:
- The Expressionist set design is super "artsy" but sort of out of place, which gives me the delightful feeling that it is there just for the fun of it. Like Tears of a Black Tiger is about color, or Speed Racer is with CGI.
- Nothing is resolved lightly, or particularly happily. Even the shmaltzy Christmas ending leaves you wondering if Gish's extra affection for the boy isn't tinged with the loss of her own son, or even some icky attraction to the too-strong and too-mature boy.
The best example of this avoidance of trite is when Mitchum's character is taken by the police and the boy cries and breaks down at the sight.
The movie is not particularly obscure, and I'm sure most people in this community already have formed an opinion about it. I'm more interested in getting to the comments than in talking more about the film here. I'll gush one more idea and then squat by my computer, waiting for discussion:
If you watch this film as a sort of critique of history - say specifically of the Great Depression, which is when I picture it taking place - I think that its general hypothesis is actually stated by Lillian Gish's character: "It's a hard world for little things." This sort of colloquial philosophizing has always struck me as the sort of inquiry into the world that film does best. Movies aren't academic papers, nor do they have the length and detail of communication that can characterize novels, but they can provide us with handfuls of off-the-cuff meanings and emotions, from which we are free to construct narratives that exist more in our own lives than in any tangible document. What I love so much about this movie is that it presents itself entirely in the language of off-the-cuff shots, lines of dialogue, songs, and plot developments, all of which can (if you want them to) add up to a narrative about how hard it is to be little in the world. Which is a silly thing to say, of course, unless you're Lillian Gish with a shotgun.