A Movie A Year | 1955 - The Night of the Hunter
I'm continuing my quest to watch more classic movies by selecting a new film to watch for every year since 1940! You can see my previous picks below. For 1955, I watched the noir thriller/horror The Night of the Hunter. This review contains spoilers for the movie.
My classic movie diary picks so far (click to expand):
1940 - Rebecca
1941 - Citizen Kane
1942 - There Was A Father
1943 - The Ox-Bow Incident
1944 - Laura
1945 - Brief Encounter
1946 - It's A Wonderful Life
1947 - Monsieur Verdoux
1948 - Rope
1949 - The Third Man
1950 - Rashomon
1951 - Strangers on a Train
1952 - Umberto D.
1953 - Stalag 17
1954 - On the Waterfront
The Night of the Hunter is about a serial killer, Harry Powell, who poses as a preacher to pursue two children in an attempt to steal $10,000 of stolen cash left hidden by their dead father. It is directed by Charles Laughton, who was better known as an actor; this is his only directing credit. Sadly, the film was a commercial and critical failure at the time, but has since grown to be appreciated as one of the best movies of the 1950s, appearing on various 'Best Movie' lists and the Criterion Collection.
Throughout the film, the use of shadows and silhouette is incredibly effective. Powell looms like a sinister threat in a fairytale, often entering a scene as a distant shadowy figure. It's very unsettling, and there are multiple sequences that had me on edge - in particular, one where the children are trying to escape in a boat, with Powell pursuing them just a few steps away. Another, where Powell disappears from view on the other side of a window pane is horror perfection.
The main element that sets this movie apart from anything I've seen is its dreamlike, Grimm's fairtytale quality. One standout sequence, for example, where the children sail downriver in a rowboat through the night, watched on by wildlife - is eerie and beautiful and dreamlike all at once, reminiscent of an old tale told before bed. There's other little touches like a flickering lantern outside the family's home, or the row of children following Rachel Cooper like ducklings behind a mother goose, that make this such a visually unique film.
The tone really reminded of one of my favourite childhood book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, another dark fable about children facing sinister dangers in a world that seldom takes care of them. Other stories like Coraline and Over the Garden Wall capture this brilliantly too, but The Night of the Hunter takes that idea and applies the otherworldly aesthetic to a horror/thriller story. Plenty of modern horror movies are told from the perspective of children (Stephen King's It as an example) but The Night of the Hunter is unlike anything I've seen because of its nightmarish fable quality. I would love to watch or read more stories like it.
Where the movie falls down for me is largely in its more sentimental leanings, which can be a tad outdated. In theory, the idea of a fairtytale-like ending is in keeping with the tone of the movie, but I found myself wishing it kept a little more of its ambiguity. For a film with perhaps one of the most horrifying, eerie images that I've seen from this era - that of the mother's body floating underwater, hair streaming with the current - it's a disappointingly tame ending, lacking the edge of the rest of the film.
Having said that, the rest of the film is so strong that it still holds up as one of my favourite classic movies I've seen, and certainly one of the best classic horrors.
What else have I watched from 1955?: The Ladykillers, To Catch a Thief, Lady and the Tramp, Daddy Long Legs, and Diabolique.
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