Motionless for 90 minutes, I could not even remove my coat. I sweated and shivered. I felt in shock. Was the film recreating scenes from my sleep? I had never seen, as far as I can recall, The Night of the Hunter. That is until a cold, wintry night in the 1990s when, working in Glasgow, I went to the city's GFT cinema to catch a new 35mm print of Charles Laughton's 1955 masterpiece. It was his only film as a director. Critics panned it on its release, consequently killing off the actor's career behind the camera, and perhaps robbing history of further works of greatness.
It was a film I'd heard of, but knew nothing about; I wanted to see it, but had no idea why. Then came that dizzying sense of already having dreamt it. So strong was this impression, I felt a bit like the character of architect Walter Craig in 1945's brilliant Dead of Night, wondering if he is trapped in a repeating chain of interlinked ghost stories. Unlike Craig, though, I didn't have repressed urges to strangle anyone. Tricks of the mind? Scarier than ghosts.
The Night of the Hunter, set in Depression-era West Virginia and based on a novel by Davis Grubb, is best known for Robert Mitchum's extraordinary performance as serial-killer-posing-as-priest Harry Powell, a menacing religious misogynist who marries widows for their money and kills them off in the name of the Lord. Having been jailed for stealing a car, he shares a cell with father-of-two Ben Harper, soon to be hanged for murder and the theft of $10,000. Before his arrest Harper hides the money in a rag doll belonging to his little daughter Pearl, making her and his 10-year-old son John swear never to tell where the money is hidden. The plot hinges on Powell's pursuit of the money and John's determination to protect his sister and escape from a psychopath whom others assume is virtuous. Hiding his past, Powell woos, then marries Harper's widow Willa (Shelley Winters). When she discovers his motives he murders her, and the children escape on a boat down the river. A tense chase ensues.
At its heart, the film is a children's fairytale – strange and idiosyncratic – but also a noir thriller, laced with the darkest elements of both genres: death, guilt, greed, poverty, cruelty, biblical references and a terrifying pursuit by the scariest of bogeymen. Laughton described it as "a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale". John, played superbly by the steely eyed Billy Chapin, is pivotal as the boy who is alone in perceiving Powell's true motives. In a tale of innocence and experience, he must quickly grow up in the most sinister of circumstances; he must resist adult hypocrisy and stupidity, and a new "father" who pretends to be loving, but is secretly abusive.
Gripping in its narrative, the film is also frequently and darkly humorous. Pearl unwittingly repeats a hangman song cruelly sung about their father by other children, just because it's catchy. And I love the moment when she innocently plays with the wads of dollar notes from the doll, just out of Powell's sight, before John spots it and quickly stuffs the money back into its hiding place.
Laughton's film is also daring in its sexual references. There are frequent hints at Powell's paedophilia as he playfully bounces Pearl on his knee to coax out her secrets, and a horribly sugar-coated scene where he buys the lovestruck teenager Ruby some ice-cream. It's a foretaste of his role as Max Cady in 1962's Cape Fear, a performance not bettered by a less subtle Robert De Niro in Scorsese's 1991 version. Earlier in Hunter we also see a furious and sexually repressed Powell in a strip joint, quietly cursing the stage performer at the very moment his trusty, murderous flick knife uncurls and rips through his trouser pocket in a phallic manner.
The scene in which Powell first meets Willa in the ice-cream parlour and explains the tattooed letters on his knuckles – the muscular battle between LOVE and HATE – is perhaps the film's best-known and influential, revisited with verve by Radio Raheem in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and in The Simpsons, where Sideshow Bob (mixing this with De Niro's Max Cady) is limited by his three cartoon fingers, and can only display LUV and HAT.
It's the film's uniquely dreamlike, otherworldly quality which cemented it as my choice for this series, and still mesmerises me. Cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons) conjures starkly lit, shadowy scenes, particularly when Powell coldly rebuffs Willa's advances on their honeymoon night, and when he later murders her. The film also glitters with sunlit, meadowy vistas that evoke a sense of childhood innocence against a backdrop of brutal 1930s poverty. These contrasting moods surreally come together when Willa's body – throat cut and sitting in the car at the bottom of the river – is glimpsed by local drunk Birdie Steptoe, her hair flowing alongside the reeds in dappled sunlight. It is equally horrific and beautiful.
Nothing quite compares to the moonlit river scene, where the children's escape is accompanied by Pearl's sudden, extraordinary song. As they drift along the swirling waters they are watched over by an assortment of animals – rabbits, birds, a toad – and the effect is bizarre, exquisite and utterly compelling. Walter Schumann's music adds a special dimension. Indeed, hymns and other songs are powerfully used throughout, especially when Mitchum's deep voice reverberates across the silhouetted landscape during his chilling, remorseless pursuit of the children. This scene is my all-time favourite: magical, transcendent – pearlescent, you might say. It also reminds me of Nick Drake's remarkable 1969 song River Man. I sometimes wonder if it was inspired by it.
Laughton, best known for playing Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, should arguably have been more revered than Laurence Olivier if only he'd had the same good looks (their respective performances in Spartacus bear this out), but clearly his skill as an actor had a huge influence on his work as a director. Mitchum is certainly at his best in this film, and Robert Gitt's documentary Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter includes some illuminating rushes of Laughton's demonstrative rehearsals, particularly with the children. It is also fascinating to see silent movie star Lillian Gish in a rare speaking role as John and Pearl's tough but loving protector, Rachel Cooper.
Did I really dream the film before I saw it? The pragmatic answer is that I must have unwittingly caught a glimpse of The Night of the Hunter as a child in the 70s. We didn't have a colour telly until 1981 (for Charles and Diana's wedding, no less), so this black-and-white film, released most unfashionably during the new age of 50s Technicolor, perhaps hit a key part of my subconscious.
I know films can induce deja vu, but is it just an illusion or can we find a narrative familiar because it is so skilfully portrayed, so fundamental to our psyche, and so profoundly scares and comforts us? The Night of the Hunter still haunts me, and to this day I am not sure if I pursued it in the normal way, or if on some deeper, unknown level – like the forces of good and evil it evokes – it has been stalking me all along.
