Hello everybody! Today the Dove speaks in English since this is my homework for school (English class). I know I’m not very good at it but I’ll try it because the notes I’m gonna write down will be my thoughts about the film during the discussion next week. So, let’s try! If you cannot understand me, there is the translator here at your left.
I read about this movie on my school book of cinema: this has one of the most famous scenes for light and study of the shot!
I’m talking about the scene when the two children are in their bedroom and we see that the boy is standing near the wall. On that wall there is the light from the street, and so we can see three different parts in that image: the girl in the bed, the boy standing between that light and the bed, and the ligt on the wall. Then, there is a shadow, from the street: it’s the shadow of the pshycopath that seems to cover the boy!
This is a prediction of the future events: as the title says, this is a movie of preys and hunters!
I liked very much The Night of the Hunter since it is a very smart and well made piece of history. This is clearly critical to religious fanatism, we can see it because the preyer is a preacher (well, he has a very weird lecture of God, we may say). I liked very much its settings, how the light moves on the river, how the river is both the place that hides their mother’s body and that helps’em to escape. I liked very much this movie because it is the story of lust against life.
Robert Mitchum is a serial killer here and he portrays a very dangerous trickster. During the movie he always talks and quotes God, he wheedles entire folks with his speeches. Mitchum is great, and it’s very interesting that in his scenes there are often mirrors.
Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish play very different women. Both heartful.
But Shelley play the mother, the one ho gets killed and was a simple way to link the hunter to its preys; she disremember her own good during the narration just to make her new husband (the preacher played by Mitchum) proud of her. And her character ends its arc among the seaweed of the river.
On the other hand, Lillian plays a strong woman, able not to keep herself safe but to save even some children. She is the one that collects the two orphans after their escape on the river and she is the one that gives’em a family after she caught the serial killer. A great character.
The Night of the Hunter is a movie directed by Charles Laughton, in the Fifties. Even if the Cinematography by Cortez is great, I thought it’s very weird that the movie is in b/w.
And I don’t where I should find the expressionistic elements. Maybe in the shadows, how the space is represented.
Anyway I liked the movie.
And I liked the point of view of the director: especially in America, religions are just excuses to make horrible things; it’s healthy that at least one movie talks about it making a preacher (a man of God) a serial killer, a man who killed 25 wives. A man who has spent many days hunting tow little orphans only for 10 thousand dollars!
Edit: I have recently studied the pictures I had taken of the movie while I was watching it. I guess the expressionistic can be seen in the shadows, how they cover the characters, making claustrophobic places.
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