WOW Turner Classic Movies is an excellent channel!
I just got finished watching this movie staring Robert Mitchum as a religious psychopath who finds out about a man's secret and decided to terrorize the man's kids to discover it... I won't tell much more. If you ever get to see this movie, you can sit back and appreciate it more if you understand that in 1955, movies like this were not widely accepted by the public. You will recognize many of the movies that took their premise from this one. The sad thing is that the director, Charles Laughton, decided to never make movies again because of the poor reception. I think that was a damn shame!! This movie was ahead of it's time for sure. If you liked Cape Fear, you'll appreciate this movie. Also remember that the subject matter involved was a VERY risky jump for Charles Laughton.
Make sure to watch the Black and White...it looks like it may be in color too...but the sinister feel is beter in Black and White..
1 comments:
Night of the Hunter wasn't shot in colour: its excellent photography -by Stanley Cortez- was meant to pay homage to expressionist cinema and also to D.W. Griffith, whose films Laughton watched prior to directing the film... and that's one of teh reasons Lillian Gish is in the film: she was a muse of Griffith and one of young Laughton's favourite film actresses.
Actually, Laughton had started to work in the film adaptation of Norman Mailer's The Naked and The Dead, and wanted to make a film after a Thomas Wolfe novel after that... However, he was adisheartened with the box-office failure of NOTH, and parting ways with his longtime associate and film producer paul Gregory meant that his directing days were over after just one film.
Which is a pity indeed :(
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