#37: The Night Of The Hunter

Night Of The Hunter (Laughton, 1955)

Night of the Hunter is one of those short, simple films about simple ideas without an excess of dialog. The premise is simple. A boy's father robbed a bank, killing two people in the process. He makes it home and gives him the money, and tells him not to tell anyone where it is, then gets caught and hung. But before he's hung, he meets a serial killer in jail who was caught for stealing a car, and lets it slip out that the money is hidden somewhere at home. So, the serial killer goes to the boy's village and marries his mother. Everybody is enamored with him because he's so convincing pretending to be a preacher. Have you ever seen a cartoon or parody movie where a bad guy has 'Love' and 'Hate' tattooed on his fingers? That's from Night Of The Hunter.

The major themes of the movie are 'false prophets' and predators. The killer is the predator and the children are the prey. In the middle of the movie there's lots of shots of animals hunting animals, spider webs and the like to symbolize the childrens' total vulnerability.

The movie opens with a bible quote: "A good tree can only bear good fruit. A corrupt tree can only bear corrupt fruit. You will know each by their fruit". In addition to the 'hunter', the killer is also the 'false prophet'. It's not until the children meet a woman who is not fooled and sees the situation as it is that they get protected from the predator.

But, the real villain of the film is the kids' father. The serial killer is just an animal, an automatic function of the world lacking free will. It's a fact of nature that if the children have all this money the predators of the world will come after it. The father should never have put that kind of adult responsibility in the hands of children not equipped to handle it.

The movie is short, simple, well written with great imagery, and expresses it's ideas really beautifully.

Rating: ***** / 5

68/101