It might be a toss up… best debut and only film directed by an actor who starred in a version of Mutiny on the Bounty? I guess we could have a sub-section about appearing in the film or not to make it easier. Laughton, like Brando, showed such great cinematic instincts as a director you can’t help but wonder what both could have achieved if they’d continued?
Night of the Hunter is a macabre fairy tale, a morality fable told with wit and verve. Mitchum’s preacher is one of his great roles, part pantomime villian and part psychopath… it’s a potent mix.

It’s one of the strengths of the film that he’s not playing it as an out an out heavy, keeping it edgy, even suggesting schizophrenia, he’s deluded and convinced he’s doing God’s work. Of course it’s not always easy to discern the deeply religious from the deeply disturbed, as ‘spiritual’ delusion is an oft seen symptom in the mentally ill. One senses Laughton has drawn upon many sources to realise his vision. German expressionistic choices are all through it, and he revels in the artificiality of the environment and the theatricality of the piece, introducing innocent elements of the natural world into a canvas dreamscape.

The set up is quickly established and the preacher Harry Powell sets off to do his pre-ordained work. He marries the widow and on the wedding night puts her in her place. His religion is old fashioned and simple, he regards her as flesh/trash, a vessle of temptation and a barrier to him having a clean and holy life as his Lord intended, a common enough sentiment in many early church writings. If he has to kill then that’s perfectly Biblically sanctioned, his Old Testament god did not draw the line at slaughtering women and children, so why should he?

Mitcham hints at a sexual dimension to the satisfaction his murders bring, but he never leers or overplays. Harry is an angel of death, a constant threat to the environment he inhabits and the shots of Willa underwater are high photographic art indeed, amongst the most striking in all of cinema. Great evil like Harrys can only be bettered by a pure heart, and Lillian Gish plays the unlikely nemesis. The scene where she joins in a duet with Mitchum of his ‘theme’ song is wonderful, only to see Harry vanish with some cinematic sleight of hand. The children are fine performance wise, one senses Laughton had seen Rene Clements masterpiece Forbidden Games as there are similarites of tone.
The music also is pivotal and surprisingly deft, given the era’s lamentable impulse to bombast and clutter in thrillers, a delicate score and worthy of Aaron Copeland.

The children do abide, and this film once seen will never be forgotten.