The Criterion LaserDisc of The Night of the Hunter was just the coolest thing when it came out after having to look at this film on videotape for years. It is sharp, has great contrast and detail, is in 1:1.33 (which can be cropped to 1:1.85 without problems) and even sounds pretty good.

Whenever I have seen The Night of the Hunter, I ask myself the same question: "How in God’s name did this film come about?" I must admit that I find the film striking and original in every way (although it is difficult to pinpoint what makes it so affecting); I wonder if the effects I feel when watching the movie are what the creators intended. But in all the time I have known this film, I never knew the why of it.

Over the years, I suppose everyone comes into contact with at least some of the roles that made Charles Laughton one of the most famous actors in the world during the 1930s: King Henry the VIII in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Mister Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Inspector Javert in Les Misérables (1935), Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and his incredible Quasimodo in 1939’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. But I was introduced to Laughton by seeing Witness for the Prosecution (1957) at the Billy Wilder Marathon put on by Filmex in 1972. I was 14.

© 1955, Paul Gregory Productions. Renewed © 1983 by United Artists Corp. All Rights Reserved.

That Laughton could have a quiet, dreamy side to him was never a question with me. His Sir Wilfred Robarts in Witness for the Prosecution was and is, to me, an astonishing performance – one that I probably carry around with me in some way. Simon Callow in his excellent biography Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor (1987) suggests that what makes Witness work is the way Laughton as an actor personifies Robarts’ basic Englishness: a concern for proper procedures, an unyeilding desire to see justice done. Callow makes an interesting observation: "Sir Wilfred’s crustiness and eccentricity are quickly revealed by Laughton to be masking an extreme boyishness, an emotional immaturity which is not without charm."

This is a key point. People often wonder after seeing Hunter, "What attracted Laughton to this story?" It could have something to do with how Laughton saw himself as a rather overgrown, albeit famous, youngster.

After becoming the most famous villain in the movies during the 30s, Laughton went through a crisis of sorts. He had become famous for his portrayals of cruel men but, he reasoned, this was not what he was about as a person. Wouldn’t it be possible to display the art-loving, Shakespeare-quoting lapsed Catholic side of his personality? He continued to act in films all through the 40s, but kept an eye on the prospect of returning to the theatre. Towards this goal, Laughton had struck up a friendship with Bertolt Brecht, eventually collaborating on the first English translation of Galileo as well as mounting the first production of the play with himself in the lead – in Los Angeles, of all places.

Laughton had developed a technique of reading from books at parties in order to avoid having to converse with people. He had met Brecht at a party this way, so it is not surprising that an enterprising MCA agent named Paul Gregory witnessed this at one point, and suggested to Laughton that he should read to people from the stage. Laughton agreed and went on an extended tour of America – playing, in some cases, Women’s Clubs, sometimes libraries – reading from, among other things, the Bible. They made a fortune.

Something else that Laughton was doing by the late 1940s was to encourage young actors by forming a school in his home. Among his students, whom he regarded almost as closely as his own children, were Shelly Winters and Robert Ryan.

While Laughton was away on his touring, Gregory kept thinking about his star client. He regarded the work Laughton had been doing in the theatre as a promising direction for him. Laughton should become a director. When Davis Grubbs’ novel The Night of the Hunter was published in 1953 and unexpectedly became a best seller, Gregory bought the film rights to it immediately, knowing that it would appeal to Laughton.

Laughton read the book and was altogether entranced. The West Virginia-born author had written the novel while working in an ad agency in Philadelphia. The story of John Harper, whose father is captured and hung for a botched gas station robbery, and in whom is entrusted the loot, the book is full of poetic, languorous language, suggesting many visual pictures to Laughton, who began an extensive correspondence with Grubb. They would talk about a scene from the book, and Laughton would continually ask the author to "draw it." This was the hallmark of Laughton’s style: to encourage others to express themselves to the fullest. In this way, he could sort of jump-start his own conception of how the overall picture should look. In the same way as Gregory brought the book to Laughton’s attention, all the creative people working on Hunter would strive to bring their best ideas to him.

© 1955, Paul Gregory Productions. Renewed © 1983 by United Artists Corp. All Rights Reserved.

Next was to find someone to play the Preacher, Harry Powell. Laughton approached Robert Mitchum, who was known as one of the baddest-asses in Hollywood. "I have a part for you, Robert. He is a degenerate." "Present." was Mitchum’s reply.

On the strength of Mitchum’s name and Laughton’s directing they were able to secure the bulk of the financing from United Artists – $700.000. Gregory had gotten artistic control of the film - provided they could get it past the censors. United Artists would release it worldwide.

A considerable controversy has surrounded the writing of the screenplay. Initially, the adaptation was undertaken by novelist and film essayist James Agee. Agee had written the script with John Huston for the latter’s film of C.S. Forester’s The African Queen (1951), so he was considered "bankable" in some lights. He and had grown up in Tennessee, and was respectful of many of the characterizations and tones in the book. Much of the dialogue in the film is lifted verbatim from the novel. Agee didn’t change a thing.

But he was also a heavy drinker. He procrastinated. He did not always answer the telephone. Eventually, the draft he handed in was over 300 pages – way too long and detailed – asking for all sorts of things which were way beyond the budget. This script has apparently vanished, but since the start of filming was approaching, Laughton (who after all, had collaborated with Brecht!), decided to re-write it himself. There is correspondence indicating that Agee felt that he had let the Hunter team down, citing other writing assignments; would Laughton take a co-writing credit? Laughton and Gregory refused this option, so Agee has sole credit.

By this time, Laughton had cast the rest of the picture, so he could write it with his actors in mind. He had already selected his cinematographer – Stanley Cortez – with whom he was having deep conversations on how they were going to tell the story. From the moment I first saw The Night of the Hunter, I recognized the hallmarks of silent films – the striking images, the sense of time and the narrative, and of course, the expressionist sets – where could this notion have come from?

Here is something that not too many ex-commercial directors making their feature debuts will be doing anytime soon: Laughton and Cortez began looking at all the D.W. Griffith films they could find. The film has always struck me as more German expressionist, but no – it was Griffith they were looking at. They would talk about the Griffith films for hours, and it is here where Laughton came to realize another casting coup: Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper. Laughton had idolized Gish ever since seeing her in Way Down East (1920). He wrote to her, she read the script and liked it, and that was all there was to it.

They shot the film in something like 33 days. Laughton treated all the main creative people to dinner after every day’s shooting where they would talk about the scenes to be shot the next day. Everything was carefully storyboarded. The entire shoot was attended by the composer for the film, Walter Schumann (who had just gotten off the assignment of writing the theme for Dragnet), who set up a piano in the editing room so that the film could be cut to the music more seamlessly. It was edited and scored and Laughton thought it was magnificent. He was as proud of it as of anything he had ever done in his life. It previewed poorly. He refused to cut it. United Artists’ felt that they had a dud on their hands, the novel was a dim memory by this point (early 1955), and Gregory Company had the final cut on the picture.

So United Artists did the only sensible thing a movie studio could do in the 50s with a product they couldn’t sell easily: they dumped it onto the market, opening it in a large number of bookings – a great number of them drive-ins. All of the posters carried the tagline, "The wedding night, the anticipation, the kiss, the knife, BUT ABOVE ALL. . . THE SUSPENSE!" with artwork of Mitchum holding Shelly Winters (in a negligee) with a knife in one upraised hand. Yes, I admit, those elements are in the film, but even so, they still strike one as being exceptionally cruddy examples of film marketing.

The film met with universally dull business and was pulled from the marketplace rather quickly. Laughton’s agent/producer Paul Gregory had purchased the screen rights to The Naked and the Dead for Laughton to direct. Norman Mailer even worked with him on it, but it would never happen – not with Laughton, anyway – he was too despondent over the failure of Hunter to get worked up over anything else for some time.

© 1955, Paul Gregory Productions. Renewed © 1983 by United Artists Corp. All Rights Reserved.

It all seemed perfectly reasonable: a best seller. A big star. A well-known actor directing (just like Laurence Olivier!) What happened? One of the things that I have noticed in doing the research for this story is that rarely has a film been so misunderstood by the public. The combination of horror, internal perspectives and poetic handwringing that forms the novel The Night of the Hunter is something that wouldn’t even bother the prissiest reader of fiction today; the heroes of today’s novels are frequent victims of emotional, physical and sexual violence. In the motion picture medium, the combination of elements in Hunter causes some (well a lot, actually) of viewers to consider it only on the basis of "is it scary?"

I suppose that the appeal the film has for me is that it is a very unusual story. The experience it takes you on is like nothing I have ever seen attempted. There is a pleasurable stimulus in the way the story unfolds and the strange little asides that they indulge in – the conversation with the hangman and his wife and so on – these things continually surprise me. I love so many of the little quiet, strange places the film manages to get into, from the famous drift downstream, to Uncle Birdy’s rumination to his wife’s picture, to the place where Ruby confesses to herself after flirting with a boy, "I’ve been bad." These are not the kinds of places where suspense films usually go, unless we’re talking about Marathon Man (1976).

People look at The Night of the Hunter for clues as to the beginning of the modern "horror/suspense" film. As though it was some kind of schlocky drive-in movie. If you look at it from that perspective, during the second half of the film you are bound to loose interest. But Hunter is a lot closer to Sling Blade (1996) than to Seven (1995). If we must have a cinema that is primarily concerned with pathology, sure, The Night of the Hunter could be viewed as a standard-bearer in the fact that it deals with a man who is pathologically insane. Where it disappoints for some, is that it does not place its sympathies with the Preacher – ever. Mitchum’s Harry Powell is charming, sure. He would have to be or we would never sit through the film. "The Devil has all the best lines." But the film is John’s story. When he cares enough for Mrs. Cooper to feel embarrassed that he has no Christmas present for her and wraps up an apple in a doily to give to her, we know that the nightmare is over. This is the scene that sends shivers up my spine and causes my windpipe to choke up.

Laughton’s film asks us to do nothing less than to become children again – to look at that terrible moment when the world isn’t entirely magic and wonder. That moment everyone must go through if we are to grow up at all.

The mistake begun with the release of The Night of the Hunter as drive-in fare continues to this day. If you are expecting a rollercoaster ride of thrills – forget it. But if you can let go enough to follow this extraordinary film on its journey through the darkness, then it can be very rewarding.

12.3.01