Night of the Hunter (1955)

“Beware of false prophets, that come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  Ye shall know them by their fruits.”

From the moment the film starts the tune and tone of the music lets you know that you’re not watching a comedy.  Then soon after comes the above quote from the book of Matthew 7:15-16 in the Bible.

One of the interesting things about viewing older movies is that there was still experimentation going on.  Feature length narrative movies only kicked off in 1906 with the Australian movie “The Story of the Kelly Gang” and since then Directors and Cinematographers have been experimenting with different looks, angles and in particular lighting.  This was especially the case with black and white films where light and shadow intermingled to create a variety of “feelings” a movie may give its viewer.  “Film Noir” (or “Black Film”) was a term used by the French to describe the dark feel many of Hollywood’s crime drama’s had.  The long shadows projected throughout Carol Reed’s The Third Man created a sense of tension and mystery of who or was lurking in the shadows and also brought out the darker motives of one or more of the characters.  “The Night of the Hunter” is a drama/thriller that falls under the Noir classification and as at today currently (June 2016) sits in the Top 20 of the all-time best Noir films according to the Internet Movie Database.

Not being one who destroys the story for others, the movie is basically about a crook going around under the disguise of a preacher.  He obtains knowledge of a hidden stash of $10,000 and goes on the hunt for it even if it means deceiving a widow and a whole town.  

The film is wonderfully shot and particularly in one segment of the film I couldn’t say that I have seen anything similar.  Some great ideas and techniques are used with the below being such an example.  

The image of a boat in the background gently moving out of the image of a spider’s web which gave the idea that the children in the boat were escaping the grasp of the spider, in this case Robert Mitchum’s character.  But just as the boat floats off the screen, lengths of the web also go off to the right of the screen giving the idea that the spider in that web is still on the prowl and may just catch up as it slowly crawls along the single strands of web.  Another scene related to the above is how the cinematographer deals with the passing hours during one particular night while the hunt is still on.  Simply brilliant.

It didn’t start here, nor does it stop here.  The movie is acted, filmed and directed very effectively that justifies its rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Robert Mitchum, dare I say it, really suits the role and continues his great acting just like his earlier movie “Out of the Past” and there are stand-out performances from Shelly Winters as the widow and her two kids.  

The Bluray used for this review was brought out by Shock DVD in Australia and basically contains the movie and a featurette.  The result of some careful restoration by MGM has given us really good image quality and the transfer to Bluray is great as well.  Its sharp and consistent with the shadow/dark areas being very well rendered along with the film grain that keep its film feel (some DVD/Bluray releases in the past have had abnormal amounts of noise removal done to the image which has removed the grain and image detail).  Some additional extra’s on the Bluray would be nice and if that was important you can also get the Arrow Films version from the UK (still Region B) for a similar price which has a heap of extras including a 2.5 hr documentary on the making of the film.   Criterion (Region A) in the USA also have an excellent release however that will require a region A player which will leave the vast majority of people in Australia unable to view it and its cost is also much higher than the Australian or UK edition which is another turn-off.  

Overall I would give this a rating of 4.5 ferrets for the movie, 4 for the image quality and 2.5 for the Australian Bluray release simply because it doesn’t really have any extras apart from a featurette.  

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