The hunter's night

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Movie
German title The hunter's night
Original title The Night of the Hunter
The night of the hunters Logo.png
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1955
length 89 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Charles Laughton
script James Agee (and Charles Laughton, anonymous)
production Paul Gregory
for United Artists
music Walter Schumann
camera Stanley Cortez
cut Robert Golden
occupation
synchronization

The Night of the Hunter (Original title: The Night of the Hunter ) is an American feature film from 1955, based on the novel The Night of the Hunter of the author Davis Grubb of 1953. The thriller, which is often the film noir is imputed , is the only directorial work by actor Charles Laughton in a film.

The night of the hunter takes place in the American Great Depression of the 1930s and tells of the psychopathic "itinerant preacher" Harry Powell, played by Robert Mitchum . When he learns from a death row inmate that he had stolen US $ 10,000 in a robbery and that he had hidden the stolen money with his family, he approaches the widow and her children in order to get the money.

When it was released, the film was viewed with skepticism by the critics and rejected by the audience. In the meantime, however, it is considered a stylistically unique masterpiece. In 1992 he was inducted into the National Film Registry . The French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma listed him in 2008 behind Orson Welles ' Citizen Kane in second place of the best films of all time.

action

On the Ohio River in the USA , around the beginning of the 1930s during the Great Depression: Harry Powell, a psychopathic woman murderer, is a murderous traveling preacher . He has the words "Love" and "Hate" tattooed on both of his hands . Because of a comparatively harmless car theft, he was sent to prison for a few weeks, where he shared a cell with the murdered murderer and bank robber Ben Harper. This looted $ 10,000 in a robbery (according to today's purchasing power, as of July 2019, around $ 188,000) and killed two people. Only Ben's children, John and little Pearl, know that he hid the money in Pearl's doll. Shortly before his arrest, they had to swear to their father that they would not tell anyone. Powell learns about the money - but not the hiding place - by questioning Ben in his sleep. After Ben's execution, Powell is determined to get the booty.

When Powell is released, he immediately approaches Ben's gullible widow, Willa Harper, by pretending to have been a prison priest and to have enjoyed her husband's trust. With vivid sermons, he stole the benevolence of the other villagers, finally convincing Willa and marrying her. But John senses early on that something is wrong with Powell. For his part, Powell soon realizes that John knows where the prey is hiding and puts increasing pressure on him and Pearl. Willa quickly becomes psychologically dependent on the preacher and has more trust in him than in her son. Under the influence of her husband, she began to preach publicly herself. Only the quirky Uncle Birdie, with whom John always fishes, is worried. Powell uses increasingly perfidious methods to find out where the money is from the children. His dealings with Willa are also becoming increasingly brutal. Finally, he kills his wife and sinks the body in the river at night. He tells the children and Willa's worried employer, Mrs. Spoon, that his wife has left him. He's fooling them into thinking he's a broken man.

At home he continues to terrorize and torture the children. Uncle Birdie discovers Willa's body in the river, but for fear of being accused of murder himself, he doesn't dare to go to the police - instead he gets drunk. Powell presses the secret from the children, but at the last moment they escape with the money. They look for the completely drunk Uncle Birdie, who cannot help them. Therefore the children have to flee on the river in a boat. Powell follows them overland on horseback while he writes a letter trying to fool the villagers that he has gone away with the children. Finally, John and Pearl find shelter with Mrs. Cooper. The widow runs a kind of home for homeless children. The children quickly gain confidence in her, but they continue to hide their secrets.

When Powell also reaches the place, he approaches the pubescent Ruby, a protégé of Mrs. Cooper, to find out the whereabouts of John and Pearl. He tries to bring the children back, but resolute Mrs. Cooper drives him off the property. When Powell enters the house at night, she injures him with a gunshot and calls the police. Powell is arrested for murder after his previous crimes have come to light. When Powell is arrested, John breaks down mentally and throws the money at Powell's feet. In the course of the grueling trial that followed, onlookers attending the trial learned of Powell's crimes. A mob led by Mrs. Spoon almost succeeds in lynching the murderer , who appears to be sentenced to death. John and Pearl stay with Mrs. Cooper, who is like a mother to the children with her honest, simple and pious demeanor.

background

The serial killer Powers (around 1920)

Pre-production

The Night of the Hunter is based on Davis Grubb 's debut novel of the same name , which was published in 1953 and became a bestseller. Among other things, Grubb was inspired by his mother, who volunteered to look after impoverished families in the 1930s. The serial killer Harry F. Powers, who was born in the Netherlands in 1892, was used by Grubb as a historical template for Harry Powell . This published early 1930s to single or widowed women looking Personals to be where he pretended looking for love and a woman. He robbed and murdered the widows Dorothy Lemke and Asta Eicher, who had contacted him, and he also killed Eicher's three children. Powers was sentenced to death after his arrest and nearly fell victim to a 4,000-person lynch mob in September 1931. On March 18, 1932, Powers was hanged in Grubb's hometown of Moundsville, and Harry Powell appears to be hanged at the end of the film.

The theater and television producer Paul Gregory was so fascinated by the book that he bought the film rights from Grubb. The small production company Paul Gregory Productions looked for the film studio United Artists as a sales partner at the box office. United Artists was known for allowing its filmmakers extensive artistic freedom. Gregory then hired his friend Charles Laughton to direct . Both had already performed three pieces together on Broadway in their respective roles as director and producer.

In addition, by the mid-1950s, Laughton had been a film star and character actor popular with audiences and critics for over two decades . However, he had long wanted to work as a film director. The Night of the Hunter became his first and last film as a director. His biographer Simon Callow writes that for Laughton the directorial work was a kind of accumulation of his life's work, as he was able to show his diverse knowledge in the fields of art, literature and acting. According to some of his friends, the fact that Laughton did not take on any further directorial work for the film until his death in 1962 was due to the lack of understanding of his contemporaries about the film he was making, which should have deeply affected him.

script

Charles Laughton (1940), photography: Carl van Vechten

The script was commissioned to the renowned writer James Agee , who was familiar with the Great Depression and its impact on the rural population, which was thematized in the film. In 1941 he published the important illustrated book , I want the great men, about the misery of people during the Great Depression in the USA. Agee's version turned out to be far too long, he had small supporting characters lead pages of monologues and introduced an African-American family into the plot that was not even featured in Grubb's book. His vision was to paint a democratic society picture of life on the Ohio River during the economic crisis. In practice, however, the script was almost impossible to film (unless the film was six hours long) and Laughton complained that it was "as thick as a telephone directory." Then Laughton shortened and edited the script himself, so that, according to Paul Gregory Laughton, in the end, had more influence on the script than Agee. Despite the problems with this, the collaboration with Agee always remained collegial and Laughton decided that despite his own adaptations in the film opening credits, James Agee should be named alone as the scriptwriter. Unusually for a Hollywood film, Laughton kept close contact with Davis Grubb while he was working on the film and asked him about his literary influences, whereupon he named Hans Christian Andersen , among others . Elements of a gothic nightmare and a fairy tale were added to the plot . At the same time, the script remained close to the novel by Grubb. James Agee died of a heart attack before the film was released in May 1955, so this script was one of his last works.

Another problem with the script was that it came into conflict with the strict anti- blasphemy rules under the Hays Code that applied to American films at the time . The National Council of Churches , for example, demanded that the script should make it clearer that Harry Powell was not an ordained minister. The filmmakers followed this suggestion, albeit not with the Council's proposed removal of the religious songs Powell sings in the film. In Grubb's novel, Ruby recounts that she also had sex with the young men she secretly meets - in the film this issue was left unclear as a result of the Hays Code. The viewer does not learn how far Ruby's sexual experiences with the young men went.

The script for the first part of the film was laid out in such a way that the viewer always has a little more knowledge of the argument between Harry Powell and his stepson John than these characters, which creates a special tension. In the first scenes of the film, Preacher Powell is presented to the audience as a woman murderer, whereas John has no knowledge of his crimes. Early in the film he learns that the money was hidden in the doll, while Powell knows nothing about this place. While the first half of the film is dominated by the evil Powell, the second half of the film belongs to the good-hearted Mrs. Cooper, with the dream-like river scenes acting as a link between the two halves.

occupation

Laughton briefly considered playing the role of Harry Powell himself, but from the studio's point of view he would have been too big a financial risk as the sole leading actor. Gary Cooper was in conversation, but he is said to have turned down the negative role for fear of his career. Even Laurence Olivier and even Jack Lemmon were discussed. In the end, the decision was made for Robert Mitchum , who had played anti-heroes or negative characters in many films. For Mitchum, the filming turned out to be a horror trip according to his own statements: he identified himself so much with the role of the criminal Harry Powell and was so shocked with himself that he was only able to talk about the film years later. However, he called Laughton the best director he'd ever worked with. Shelley Winters , who was actually a leading actress in the 1950s, accepted the relatively small role of the mother. She later called her appearance in the film "the most thoughtful and restrained portrayal that I have ever given". Laughton campaigned successfully for his former drama student Winters, while Paul Gregory would have preferred the sex symbol Betty Grable in the role.

Peter Graves , who plays the condemned family man, later rose to fame in the role of "Jim Phelps" in the crime series Cobra Take Over . His film children Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce subsequently failed to achieve a notable film career. While Chapin had acted in many films and won a major theater award on Broadway, Sally Jane Bruce had little acting experience other than a minor short film from 1954. The song she sang in the film during the river cruise was later sung by Kitty White because Laughton was dissatisfied with Bruce's singing. Bruce later became a teacher in Santa Barbara . The Spoon couple was played by the experienced character actors Evelyn Varden and Don Beddoe , with Varden presenting their role in a conspicuous manner with a hysterical voice, while Beddoe, on the other hand, played his character as a dumb, dominated by her husband according to the direction of Laughton. The role of Rachel's protégé Ruby took on the young actress Gloria Castillo . Emmett Lynn was initially cast in the role of Uncle Birdie and several scenes had already been shot when Laughton fired him because Lynn interpreted his character too much as a clichéd old man from the country. He was replaced by the better known James Gleason .

Silent film legend Lillian Gish , who was greatly revered by Laughton, was given the role of Rachel Cooper. At this point, Gish was only occasionally starring in films. When Gish asked why he wanted them and therefore a recourse to silent film, he replied:

“When I first went to the movies, they sat in their seats straight and leaned forward. Now they slump down, with their heads back, and eat candy and popcorn. I want them to sit up straight again. "

“When I first went to the cinema, they were sitting up straight in their seats and leaning forward. Now they fall down, their heads back, and eat candy and popcorn. I want them to sit upright again. "

- Charles Laughton

Filming

The shooting of Die Nacht des Jäger lasted from August to October 1954, and those involved in later years unanimously described them as harmonious. The budget was around 600,000 US dollars, which at the time was already a rather modest amount for an A-film production. A problem in the late stages of filming was that Mitchum was already working on a new film with ... and not as a stranger and he could only be available on Sundays. Mitchum also caused personal problems through unprofessional behavior and constant drunkenness on set, Paul Gregory recalled.

For a long time it was rumored that the child actors got their acting assignments from Robert Mitchum and not from Laughton because Laughton did not get along with the children. Numerous books asserted this, but the two and a half hour documentary Charles Laughton Directs from 2002 with previously unpublished footage of the shooting contradicts this thesis. Between scenes throughout the course of the film, Laughton also gives directional directions to the child actors, which were later cut from the finished film. Laughton shot with the actors in an unusual way that was recently customary in silent films: Instead of always shouting for the cut for individual scenes between takes , Laughton left the camera on and gave the actors spontaneous instructions. Peter Graves found Laughton's way of working, which is unique for talkies, to be pleasant, as he - without the call for editing - was never torn from the scene and was therefore more concentrated.

The state prison in Moundsville, briefly seen in the film, in which the historical role model Harry Powers was imprisoned before his execution

The film was shot in the film studios of RKO Pictures in Culver City and at the Rowland V. Lee Ranch in the San Fernando Valley . The underwater scene with the murdered mother was filmed at Republic Studios in Hollywood. For the underwater scenes, it was not Shelley Winters himself that was used, but a model. Maurice Seiderman (1907–1989), who was already a make-up artist for Orson Welles at Citizen Kane , recreated Winters' face in painstaking detail. The aerial shots were shot on the Ohio River under the direction of the young second-unit director Terry Sanders , from whom Laughton demanded a realistic-looking staging style in the style of Griffith . A particularly large number of aerial photographs were taken near Wheeling in West Virginia; in Moundsville, the birth town of Davis Grubb, brief recordings of the local state prison were made. During the shooting of Sanders, helicopters were used for the aerial shots instead of the aircraft that were common at the time.

In order to strengthen the work ethic of the employees, Gregory and Laughton promised important members of the film crew like the cameraman Stanley Cortez a percentage of the possible profit of the film in addition to their normal salary. Cortez used strong contrasts in the exposure for The Night of the Hunter , which was considered one of his trademarks. He later stated that Laughton was initially inexperienced in dealing with camera work, but then quickly contributed his own ideas and the collaboration worked extremely well. In the scene in which John Harper in the hayloft sees his stepfather riding on the horizon, instead of Mitchum and a horse, Cortez used a short actor on a pony so that the proportions were right. On instructions from Laughton, Cortez and the film composer Walter Schumann worked closely together to create a unity of image and sound in the film. When filming the murder scene, Cortez thought of Mrs. Harper of Jean Sibelius's Valse triste , which is why Schumann then used waltz music. In addition to Schumann and Cortez, the film crew included editor Robert Golden , production designer Hilyard M. Brown , set decorator Alfred E. Spencer , assistant director Milton Carter and sound engineer Stanford Houghton .

Topics and Analysis

Film historical context

The film is considered to be a unique mix of different cinematic styles and genres for which viewers were not prepared at the time. The night of the hunter is unique in film history because the film cannot be attributed to any current and cannot be compared with other works by Laughton, since it was his only work as a film director.

With its threatening and unsettling mood, Die Nacht des Jäger is often assigned to film noir . The vast majority of film noirs were crime films from the 1940s and 1950s, mostly with a pessimistic worldview. The assignment of Die Nacht des Jäger is not without controversy, mainly because of its surrealistic and fairytale tendencies, which would be relatively untypical for it. The ending of The Night of the Hunter is also rather positive and forgiving, which is a further contradiction to most film noirs. Typical plot elements of a film noir are private detectives, a femme fatale and an urban setting - none of these elements can be found in Die Nacht des Jäger . In addition, Davis Grubb is not a “ hardboiled detective ” writer like James M. Cain , Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler , who otherwise wrote the literary models for many noir films. On the other hand, a rather cynical view of the institutions of state and church and, most clearly, the light-dark contrasts typical of noir speak in favor of an assignment to film noir. Some critics consider The Night of the Hunter to be the most important example of a film noir set entirely in the country.

Borrowings from the cinematic poetry of David Wark Griffith's silent films and its cinematic realism can also be seen in The Night of the Hunter . This applies in particular to the initial scenes in the children's home village and to stage the place as a rural idyll that is finally destroyed by the arrival of the preacher. The hiding place of the two children in the basement in front of Powell is shown to the viewer through an iris diaphragm , for example , by reducing the visible image section so that the basement hiding place can be seen. The iris diaphragm was a technique used in particular in silent films, which was established by Griffith. In contrast, iris diaphragms were unusual for sound film. A return to the silent film era is evident not least from the cast of silent film legend Lillian Gish as Rachel, whose name is still associated with Hollywood silent films and especially with Griffith's works in the American public.

The dreamlike imagery, the unusual camera angles and the high-contrast lighting are reminiscent of the expressionist film from Germany of the 1920s, for example the silhouette films by Lotte Reiniger and the silent film classic Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , which, like The Night of the Hunter, features a deliberately artificial scene. While this creates an atmosphere of fear in Caligari , in The Night of the Hunter the river scenes are more of astonishment and tranquility. What is particularly striking is the blackness with which many scenes are designed - especially the scenes in which the children are threatened by the priest play with the gloom. An example is the little-lit scene at the beginning of the film in which Powell and other men are watching a dancer striptease: only the dancer and preacher with his tattooed hands and jackknife are lit, the rest of the scene is only seen in minimalist silhouettes. The expressionist influence is most evident during the roughly ten-minute river scenes, the sometimes grotesque backdrops of which were deliberately designed by the well-known production designer Hilyard M. Brown. In the river scenes there are always surrealist moments, for example when the camera perspective makes it look as if the boat with the fleeing children is caught in a spider's web.

In addition to Griffith and German Expressionism, the Scandinavian silent films were a third inspiration for Laughton. Directors such as Victor Sjöström devotedly portrayed rural life and gave a lot of space in their films to the power of nature, which appears to be overpowering to the individual - characteristics that are also recognizable in this film. So Harry Powell is stopped by the depth of the river for the time being from being able to continue hunting the children and has to follow them by land.

Use of music

The sometimes striking film music by Walter Schumann is based on the music accompanying silent films. Schumann had worked with Laughton in the past and was his first and only choice. Schumann put on a loud themed music for Harry Powell, which occurs constantly when he appears. This theme is already played in the opening credits with the name Robert Mitchum (named "pagan motif" by Schumann), then repeated in the first scene in which Mitchum drives in the car and appears for the first time. In a later scene, Mrs. Spoon convinces Willa after her husband's execution that she should remarry - the camera cuts twice briefly on a large, black train on which Powell is apparently driving towards the Harper family. The tragic fate of Willa is anticipated through image and sound. Other characters such as Uncle Birdie and Mrs. Cooper are also given their own music themes that match the characters, Mrs. Cooper's theme is reminiscent of a lullaby and conveys a sense of security, Uncle Birdie has cheerful and erratic rhythms. The music themes of Birdie and Mrs. Cooper are written in 6/8 time and harmonize rhythmically with each other, which is consistent in terms of the plot, as both act as surrogate parents for John in the film. Willa has a slow, romantic and dreamlike sounding waltz as the music theme, which only appears once after her murder: when Mrs. Cooper's protégé Ruby goes into town and looks for men. Ruby and Willa, who both fell for the preacher in a similarly obsessive manner, are thus musically linked.

In spite of the dark plot of the film, Schumann also uses various children's songs that would create a contrast between the "carefree childlike and crime". This contrast runs through the entire film. Preacher Powell sings the hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, written in 1887, several times in the film. The song is about trusting God, but since the dangerous murderer Powell sings it, the lyrics are perverted. When Powell sings the hymn again in front of Mrs. Cooper's house, she unceremoniously sings along, thereby contrasting Powell's malicious appropriation of faith with her positive trust in God. The ironic use of song songs is already considered in Grubb's novel, in which, for example, in the picnic scene Shall We Gather at the River? is sung.

Geographical and historical classification

The Ohio River plays a central role in the film

Geographically, the plot of the film takes place on the Ohio River in the Appalachians and therefore not really in the southern states , but on the border between West Virginia and Ohio . Nevertheless, The Night of the Hunter ties in with the content and form of the literary genre of Southern Gothic , to which Grubb's novel also belongs. Therefore one can see the film more accurately than "Appalachian Gothic". With its social criticism, the presence of rural villages and the dark and striking characters, many characteristics of Southern Gothic are fulfilled in The Night of the Hunter . The Ohio River plays a central role in the film: at the picnic by the river, as the residence of Uncle Birdie, as the hiding place for Willa's corpse and finally as a temporary refuge for the children. Davis Grubb noted that, as in his book, the river is the real hero of Laughton's film. The Ohio River is shown in many facets in the film and, like the Mississippi in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , forms a place of temporary refuge for the persecuted.

James Agee and Walker Evans dealt in their 1936 report on the suffering of the rural population in the Great Depression. Picture of the farmer Frank Tengle with children singing hymns

Historically, the plot is set in the Great Depression of the 1930s, which hit the farmers particularly hard. It shows the image of a powerless state that cannot even look after children and cannot contain the serial killer Powell. With his script, James Agee wanted to show how violence is increasingly finding a place in the population, which is developing a need for security in times of economic hardship, and how the boundaries between good and bad are blurring. Ben Harper wants to offer his children a good future with his bank robbery, but leaves them traumatized. The little subplot of the executioner Bart, who would prefer not to carry out executions but does not want to give up because of the secure job and the care of his children, also addresses this problem. Here Agee draws parallels to one of his favorite films, Monsieur Verdoux by Charlie Chaplin , in which Chaplin's family father also kills widows for financial reasons - like Harry Powell. Sigurd Enge even found that father Harper had been killed by the state and mother Harper by religion. The short scenes in the film, which directly show the misery of the rural population and are inserted between the dreamlike-looking sequences of the river trip, are visually reminiscent of the photographs by Walker Evans , with their grainy, rough style , which he took on his joint report with James Agee shot in the southern states in the 1930s.

At the same time, the film criticizes the gullibility and bigotry of the American people: In his submission, author Davis Grubb alludes to radical hate preachers like Charles Coughlin , who won many supporters among the needy population in the 1930s. In the film, the female rural population in particular - from the older Mrs. Spoon to the mother Willa to the youngster Ruby - is particularly impressed by Powell's vivid, striking sermons. Impressed by Powell, Mrs. Spoon urges Willa to marry him, which ultimately leads to her murder. Mrs. Spoon is later seen yelling wildly as one of the leaders of the attempted lynching against Powell, with Laughton instructing actress Evelyn Varden to play the scene with "staring eyes and a drunken face." Mr. Spoon suspects the " Gypsies " when a farmer is murdered and his horse is stolen - in fact, the next scene reveals that Powell stole the horse and apparently murdered the farmer in order to be able to follow the children on the Ohio River overland .

Both Willa Harper and Uncle Birdie are adults who cannot protect the children because they are obsessed with fears and problems. Both mourn for their deceased spouse, they calm their pain with alcohol (Uncle Birdie) or with fanatical religiosity (Willa). The latter even allows Powell to kill her without resistance after learning of his true intentions instead of taking the children and fleeing. Although the children are saved by Mrs. Cooper at the end and the film comes to a conciliatory end, the last sentence of the film that she said that the children "endure and endure" (abide and endure) is a clear indication on the continuing fate of persecuted children around the world.

"Good and bad" in the characters

The Night of the Hunter includes biblical and magical elements. The plot refers several times specifically to how Moses and Jesus managed to escape their enemies. The escape and situation of the children are reminiscent of Grimm fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood . Laughton himself described the film as a "nightmarish Mother Goose ", with the character of the maternal Rachel being specifically reminiscent of the Mother Goose, which is popular in the English-speaking world. The film should be deliberately staged in its production design and camera work from the perspective of a child - and from a child's perspective of the world.

A central theme of the film are opposites, such as those between children and adults, but above all the eternal struggle between good and evil. While Rachel Cooper stands for the good and a positive religiosity, Powell embodies as her antipole evil and a punishing, stray religiosity. In Grubb's novel, Mrs. Cooper, whose son lives far away and hardly maintains contact, is shown as a woman who is at least partially broken with life, in Gish's depiction, Mrs. Cooper appears as a symbol of good-naturedness, on the other hand, largely unsentimental and uncomplicated. This fight is represented by the tattooed fingers of Harry Powell, on which LOVE and HATE are written. In a film scene, he impressively demonstrated the fight between good (right hand = LOVE) and evil (left hand = HATE). The motif was and is cited to this day in numerous cinema and television productions. "Just as LOVE and HATE are both in the soul of man, so faith and religion serve both dangerous and ennobling purposes." While the preacher and, to a lesser extent, the sanctimonious villagers would represent narrow-minded fanaticism and certainty Mrs. Cooper "the purpose of faith, symbolic Christian compassion and perseverance," writes Elbert Ventura of the online magazine Slate .

Laughton also tried to express this contrast in acting through the stage directions. Mitchum deliberately exaggerates his character to the limits of credibility and in the style of Brecht's Epic Theater : "He is a stage he created himself, and he is happy to see both his gullible audience and his own performance," writes Jeffrey Couchman, who is researching the film, talks about Mitchum's character. In one scene when John confronts him, the preacher almost seems to be pleased that someone has come under his mask with John. It makes him all the more triumphant that nobody will believe John. When Mrs. Cooper shoots him that night, the preacher, who suddenly appears out of nowhere, looks like a slapstick character from silent film comedies. In contrast, Lillian Gish plays Mrs. Cooper in a naturalistic and believable way: "Slim, childlike, with delicate features, she radiates a spiritual intensity that manifests itself in physical strength," notes Couchman. This alternation between conspicuous and naturalistic acting is also evident in the secondary characters, through which relationship constellations are made clear: the likeable characters John and Uncle Birdie like Mrs. Cooper are played more naturally and harmonize with one another, while the hypocritical Mrs. Spoon fits through the acting style Evelyn Vardens exaggerated gestures towards the preacher, whose unwitting accomplice she becomes when she initiates the marriage between him and Willa. Shelley Winters as Willa appropriately fluctuates between naturalistic and flashy acting.

Powell finds his opponent in Mrs. Cooper, who, unlike the other female characters, does not succumb to the preacher's charm and, in contrast to Uncle Birdie, has the strength to help the children. She wins in the end, which is also made clear by the fact that she speaks both the first and the last sentences of the film, i.e. acts like a narrator who frames the plot.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was probably made for the German premiere in March 1956.

role actor German dubbing voice
Reverend Harry Powell Robert Mitchum Curt Ackermann
Willa Harper Shelley Winters Tilly Lauenstein
Rachel Cooper Lillian Gish Ursula War
Uncle Birdie Steptoe James Gleason Carl Heinz Carell
Mrs. Icey Spoon Evelyn Varden Agnes Windeck
Mr. Walt Spoon Don Beddoe Hans Hessling
Ben Harper Peter Graves Gert Günther Hoffmann

reception

Publication and audience reaction

The Hunter's Night premiered on July 26, 1955 in Paul Gregory's hometown of Des Moines , Iowa , and was released nationwide a month later on August 26, 1955. In West Germany and Austria, the film did not appear in cinemas until March 1956. The film was a commercial failure at the time, as the critic Pauline Kael recalled, for example , that she saw the film in a cinema with 2,000 seats, of which only a dozen were occupied. Paul Gregory also attributed this to the poor marketing strategy of the film studio United Artists , where The Night of the Hunter was considered too strange and was largely released in theaters without a promotion. Many contemporary posters and advertisements presented the film as a horror shocker typical of the genre, while the marketing strategies designed by Gregory to promote the film, which was unusual for viewing habits at the time, went unnoticed by United Artists. United Artists concentrated their forces in marketing mainly on the simultaneously released ... and not as a stranger with Mitchum, who produced more expensive and with Olivia de Havilland and Frank Sinatra also raised more stars in the other roles.

Contemporary reviews

The contemporary reviews of The Night of the Hunter were only mixed, on the US East Coast the film was even completely panned by some critics. The reviews in California were better, but even the local industry journal Variety was not very convinced: The "merciless terror" of Grubb's novel would disappear in Paul Gregory and Charles Laughton in their film adaptation. The debut of Gregory as producer and Laughton as director is promising, but the entire product, while sometimes fascinating, has failed altogether. It loses its important drive from having too many side stories that would have a "hazy effect" on the film. Telling the story more directly without the "embellishments" would have made the film more convincing. Columnists Ed Sullivan and Louella Parsons as well as Charlotte Speicher in the Library Journal , who was one of the few voices to be completely enthusiastic about The Night of the Hunter : “In its sensitivity, its imaginative and often poetic camera work, its haunting film music, its skillful use of hymns and especially in its poignant, nerve-wracking power, it forms an important and memorable achievement. "

Typically, most reviewers tried to balance praise and criticism. An example of this was Bosley Crowther's benevolent but not entirely convinced opinion in the New York Times of September 30, 1955: “The localities are terribly rural, the atmosphere of the provinces is intense, and Robert Mitchum plays the murderous clergyman with an iron anointing that one the shiver runs down your spine. There is more to his character than malice and meanness. There's a strong trace of Freudian aberration, fanaticism, and guilt. ”Evelyn Varden and Don Beddoe would put on fascinating displays of ignorant small-town characters, and Shelley Winters as a mother was impressive too. Crowther praised the wedding night scene between Mitchum and Winters, saying it was one of the “most terrifying scenes of its kind” since Erich von Stroheim 's classic silent film Greed . Crowther also praised the directorial work of Laughton, who would have worked with "strong, unyielding images". But he also criticized the fact that Laughton's directorial debut showed a few uncertainties that would become noticeable in the last part of the film. After the children flee, “the film moves in the direction of an allegorical contrast between the forces of good and evil. Strange, nebulous scenes, composed of shadows and unrealistic silhouettes, suggest a transition to abstraction. ”Towards the end, the scenes were handled too pretentiously and the previously harsh-looking film suddenly became too gentle.

Almost all reviewers from the 1950s shared the accusation that the film was too artistic ("arty"). According film editor Robert Golden threw a producer of United Artists this Laughton also personally, whereupon he asked him bitter, "What do you understand right from Art" In the international critics praised François Truffaut film, but prophesied also aptly that it probably Laughton's only directorial work will remain, since his work "violated the rules of commerce".

Later reception

In the following decades, the reception of the film changed fundamentally, not least due to the broadcasting of the film on US television and the changing taste of the public. Previous aspects of the film that were stigmatized as overly artistic gained praise from the 1970s onwards. Douglas Brode said in 1976 that the film combined scenes shot in the studio as obviously as possible with other, very realistic-looking shots. But “instead of colliding, they blend into a strikingly independent vision”. Truffaut said in retrospect that it was a film that had rekindled the love for experimental film ("[...] an experimental cinema that really experiments , and a cinema of discovery that truly discovers "). The release of the film on home video, various pop-cultural references and the use of directors such as Martin Scorsese increased the status of The Night of the Hunter from the early 1990s and scientific research has been increasing since then.

Many film critics now regard it as one of the best films of all time. On the review portal Rotten Tomatoes , Die Nacht des Jäger has a positive rating of 99% based on the 69 reviews received, whereby the only negative of the 69 reviews for the film comes from the year it was made. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times named the film in its 1996 Great Movies list of the best and gave it the highest rating of four stars. The Night of the Hunter is "one of the greatest American films, but has never received the recognition it deserves." People couldn't categorize him, so they would ignore him. “Still, what an irresistible, scary and beautiful film it is! And how well he survived his time. ”Even 40 years later, the film still seems completely timeless and with his first directorial work Laughton created“ a film that has never been before and never since ”. The film testifies to the great self-confidence of the debutant Laughton, because when you watch it one could think that he would fall back on an age of directing experience. In doing so, he successfully broke many cinematic conventions: "It is risky to combine horror with humor and to daringly pursue an expressionist approach."

In his review for the Chicago Reader, Dave Kehr discovered not only the influence of German Expressionism but also other “Germanic overtones” in the film: The “omnipresent, brooding romanticism” of Schiller and Goethe with his Erlkönig was palpable. Despite different influences, the "cause of its style and its power is mysterious - it is a film without precedent and without its own kind". Kehr also refers to the acting performance of Robert Mitchum, who shows his “wild sexuality” most clearly on the screen in this “lasting masterpiece”.

In Germany, Reclam's film guide wrote in 1973 that the film was “an idiosyncratic, sometimes monstrous, but always fascinating film. Laughton makes use of some stylistic devices from the silent film era, relies less on superficial action, but sells feelings and moods. He succeeds in creating images of naive beauty and gloomy power. ”The film service wrote that the film“ works with suggestive light and sound effects and thus creates an unreal, oppressive, sometimes shocking atmosphere ”. The film was only rediscovered late as a work with “original film language”. Prisma also awarded the highest rating and wrote that Laughton's only directorial work turned out to be “a unique, expressionist masterpiece with an oppressive, sometimes even shocking atmosphere and a remarkably psychopathic Mitchum, whose performance is strongly reminiscent of A Bait for the Beast . A film that was way ahead of its time in terms of atmosphere and theme. It could hardly be more gloomy! "

Influence on later artists

Some of the thriller and horror elements as well as the situations Laughton portrayed in a sometimes grotesque way refer to later films in terms of style and content. The confrontation of the contemplative small town with the ultimate evil became a central theme for the director David Lynch , for example in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks .

In retrospect, Die Nacht des Jäger can be understood as a pioneer of later, more successful film genres. Ethan and Joel Coen cited the scene with Mrs. Harper at the riverbed in their noir homage, The Man Who Wasn't There . Allusions can also be found in other films by the Coen brothers: In Ladykillers (2004) and True Grit (2010) the song Leaning on the Everlasting Arms is sung and the last line from The Big Lebowski with the sentence “The dude stays “ (“ The Dude Abides ”) is reminiscent of Mrs. Cooper's last sentence in The Night of the Hunter - in which she does not relate her statement to Jeff Bridges ' old hippie character, but to the children of the world.

In Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), the character Radio Raheem wears rings with the words Love and Hate on his fingers and at one point directly quotes Harry Powell's sermon in African-American slang. Lee uses this scene as a foretaste of the violent end of the film in Do the Right Thing , in which Radio Raheem is shot and then a violent mob roams the street as in The Night of the Hunter . In 2012, Lee featured The Night of the Hunter as one of his favorite films when it aired on Turner Classic Movies . There is also an allusion to the hand scene in the figure of Eddie played by Meat Loaf in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and in an episode of the series The Simpsons from 1993.

Bruce Springsteen alludes to The Night of the Hunter in his 1987 song Cautious Man .

Awards

Although Die Nacht des Jäger received no awards when it was published, numerous awards followed in later years by critics: In 1992 the film was included in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". In a vote by the American Film Institute in 2001, he was voted number 34 of the best American thrillers of all time, and for two years the figure of Harry Powell was also named the 34th greatest villain by the film institute. The French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma listed The Hunter's Night in 2008 as the second place for best films of all time behind Orson Welles' Citizen Kane . In 2009, the film was voted number 1 of the 50 most essential films of all time by the British culture magazine The Spectator (ahead of Apocalypse Now and Sunrise ). The Night of the Hunter was voted 63rd in 2012 by the British film magazine Sight & Sound's prestigious ten-year critics survey for the best film of all time .

Adaptations

In 1991, the television film remake The Night of the Hunter was directed by David Greene , the Grubbs novel set in the 1990s, but was judged by critics as significantly weaker. Richard Chamberlain as Harry Powell, Diana Scarwid as Willa Harper and Burgess Meredith as Uncle Birdie played among others .

Minute Texts , a radio play by Volker Pantenburg and Michael Baute, was produced by Hessischer Rundfunk and Deutschlandfunk in 2008. 93 authors interpret the 93 minutes of the film, including Hanns Zischler , Harun Farocki and Julia Hummer .

media

  • The hunter's night. DVD, MGM Home Entertainment 2001.
  • The hunter's night. DVD, Süddeutsche Zeitung Cinemathek, Sony Pictures 2006.
  • The Night of the Hunter (Blu-Ray and DVD), Criterion Collection 2010. (English)
  • The hunter's night. (Blu-Ray incl.DVD), Masterpieces Of Cinema Collection, Koch Media GmbH 2013.

Soundtrack

  • The Night of the Hunter. An Original Soundtrack Recording with Narration. Music by Walter Schumann. BMG / RCA 74321720532, 1999.

Novel

  • Davis Grubb, Susanna Rademacher The Night of the Hunter. Blanvalet, 1954. 319 pages, clothbound, size. 8 ° [Varia].
  • Davis Grubb: The Night of the Hunter (= The Night of the Hunter , translator Helmut Grass). Ullstein, No. 10772, crime novel, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin 1995, ISBN 978-3-548-10772-1 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Consumer Price Index (CPI) Inflation Calculator, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor. Retrieved August 15, 2019 .
  2. ^ Entry on Harry F. Powers. In: Find A Grave. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Harry F. Swigur: Harry Powers: Bluebeard of Quiet Dell. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  4. ↑ MOB SURROUNDS JAIL WHERE POWERS IS HERO; Attempt to Lynch West Virginia “Bluebeard” Feared - Tear Gas Keeps Crowd Back. In: The New York Times . September 20, 1931, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  5. ↑ American Legends Interviews ... Paul Gregory Charles Laughton and Night of the Hunter. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; accessed on September 19, 2019 .
  6. ^ Entry on Paul Gregory. In: Internet Broadway Database . Retrieved September 19, 2019 . (The three collaborations were Don Juan in Hell , John Brown's Body and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial )
  7. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 214 .
  8. ^ A b Mark Wildermuth: Cultural Trauma in the American Security Regime: James Agee's Cinematic Criticism and The Night of the Hunter . In: The Journal of Popular Culture . Vol. 47, No. 6 , 2014, p. 1315 .
  9. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 76-77 .
  10. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 87 .
  11. ^ A b Derek Malcolm: Charles Laughton: Night of the Hunter. In: The Guardian . April 8, 1999, accessed September 19, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 89-91 .
  13. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 6-8 .
  14. ↑ Jake Hinkson: The Little Story of Right-Hand / Left Hand. Davis Grubb, Charles Laughton and The Night of the Hunter. (PDF) Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 219 .
  16. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 169-170 .
  17. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 166 .
  18. ↑ Simon Kümin: The Night of the Hunter . In: MAXIMUM CINEMA . November 5, 2015 ( maximumcinema.ch [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  19. ^ Dan Callahan: The Art of American Screen Acting, 1912-1960 . McFarland & Company, Jefferson 2018, pp. 167 .
  20. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 174 .
  21. ↑ Ross Graeme: The reluctant movie star: 10 essential Robert Mitchum films . In: The Independent . August 3, 2017 ( independent.co.uk [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  22. ^ A b Jeff Stafford, Rob Nixon: Behind the Camera - The Night of the Hunter. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
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  24. ↑ Entry on Sally Jane Bruce. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
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  26. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 182 .
  27. ↑ documentation Charles Laughton Directs "The Night of the Hunter" (2002), 54 to 60 minutes
  28. ↑ Simon Callow : Charles Laughton. A Difficult Actor . Fromm Intl, 1997, ISBN 978-0-88064-180-7 , pp. 235 .
  29. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 40-42 .
  30. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 119-120 .
  31. ^ A b American Legends Interviews ... Paul Gregory: Charles Laughton and Night of the Hunter. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; accessed on September 19, 2019 .
  32. ↑ Charles Laughton Directs "The Night of the Hunter" at the Internet Movie Database. August 15, 2002, accessed September 19, 2019 .
  33. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 133 .
  34. ^ Rowland V. Lee Ranch. In: Moviesites. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  35. ↑ Maurice Seiderman, 82, Inventor And Hollywood Makeup Artist . In: The New York Times . July 22, 1989, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  36. ↑ documentation Charles Laughton Directs "The Night of the Hunter" (2002), minutes 86-87
  37. ^ The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Notes. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  38. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 125-126 .
  39. ^ The Night of the Hunter. In: West Virginia Culture (contemporary newspaper reports on the film). Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  40. ↑ Locations for The Night of the Hunter. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  41. ↑ Cinéma Cinémas - Stanley Cortez ASC - 1984. In: Video on YouTube . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  42. ^ A b c George E. Turner: Flashback: The Night of the Hunter. In: American Society of Cinematographers. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  43. ↑ a b c d Walter Gasperi: The night of the hunter. In: Kultur-Zeit. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  44. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 120-122 .
  45. ↑ Lim, Dennis: A Second Look: 'The Night of the Hunter' . In: Los Angeles Times . November 14, 2010, ISSN  0458-3035 ( latimes.com [accessed February 14, 2018]).
  46. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 122 .
  47. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 66 .
  48. ↑ Enge, Sigurd: Noirish or film noir? (PDF) 2009, accessed on September 19, 2019 (English). , P. 11
  49. ↑ Jochen Kürten: Expressionism from Hollywood, September 17, 2013. In: Deutsche Welle . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  50. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 113-115 .
  51. ↑ Elliott Logan: Depths of black in The Night of the Hunter . In: New Review of Film and Television Studies . Vol. 15, No. 1 , p. 104-105 .
  52. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 63-64 .
  53. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 122 .
  54. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 148 .
  55. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 153 .
  56. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 152 .
  57. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 154-155 .
  58. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 166 .
  59. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 166-168 .
  60. ↑ a b Nick Pinkerton: Southern Gothic | Deep Focus | Sight & Sound . In: British Film Institute . ( org.uk [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  61. ↑ Michael Viers: 10 Reasons Why “The Night of the Hunter” is a Classic of American Cinema . In: Taste of Cinema - Movie Reviews and Classic Movie Lists . ( tasteofcinema.com [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  62. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 123-124 .
  63. ↑ Sigurd Enge: Noirish or film noir? (PDF) 2009, accessed on September 19, 2019 (English). , P. 61
  64. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 72 .
  65. ↑ Valentina Ivic: "The Night of the Hunter" - a pastor as a serial killer . In: Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) . ( srf.ch [accessed on September 19, 2019]).
  66. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 184-185 .
  67. ↑ Elliott Logan: Depths of black in The Night of the Hunter . In: New Review of Film and Television Studies . Vol. 15, No. 1 , p. 105 .
  68. ↑ Elliott Logan: Depths of black in The Night of the Hunter . In: New Review of Film and Television Studies . Vol. 15, No. 1 , p. 106 .
  69. ^ A b Peter Kimpton: My favorite film: The Night of the Hunter. December 8, 2011, accessed September 19, 2019 .
  70. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 43 .
  71. ^ Adele Reinhartz (Ed.): Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films . Routledge, 2012, p. 194 .
  72. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 74 .
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  75. ↑ Simon Callow: The Night of the Hunter . BFI Film Classics, London 2000, p. 75 .
  76. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 177-179 .
  77. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 180, 186-187 .
  78. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 152-153, 179-180 .
  79. ^ The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Release Dates. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
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  81. ^ The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Release Dates. In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  82. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 196 .
  83. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 196-197 .
  84. ^ Variety Staff: The Night of the Hunter . In: Variety . January 1, 1955 ( variety.com [accessed September 19, 2019]).
  85. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 199-200 . Translation: In its sensibility, its imaginative and often poetic photography, its hauting musical score, its skillful blending of hymns, and especially in its gripping, nerve-wrecking narrative power, it proves an important and memorable achievement.
  86. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 200 .
  87. ↑ Bosley Crowther : Movie Review: Bogeyman Plus - NYTimes.com. Retrieved September 19, 2019 . Translated from: The locale is crushingly rural, the atmosphere of 'the sticks' is intense, and Robert Mitchum plays the murderous minister with an icy unctuousness that gives you the chills. There is more than malevolence and menace in his character. There is a strong trace of Freudian aberration, fanaticism and iniquity. Credit Mr. Laughton with a clever and exceptionally effective job of catching the ugliness and terror of certain ignorant, small-town types. He has got out of Shelley Winters a grueling performance as the vapid widow and wife. The scene of the wedding-night of Miss Winters and the preacher is one of the most devastating of its sort since Von Stroheim's Greed (…) For the evolution of the melodrama, after the threatened, frightened children flee home, angles off into that allegorical contrast of the forces of Evil and Good. Strange, misty scenes composed of shadows and unrealistic silhouettes suggest the transition to abstraction. (...) The toughness of the grain of the story goes soft and porous toward the end. The conclusion is an uncontestable statement that children, God bless them, will endure.
  88. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 197 .
  89. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 197 .
  90. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 194 .
  91. ^ A b Thomas A. Schwenn: Bringing Day to Night: The Resurrection of The Night of the Hunter. June 3, 2015, Retrieved October 10, 2019 (American English).
  92. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 215 . Translated from: The film juxtaposes the most obvious studio shots with vividly realistic images; but instead of clashing, they mesh into a strikingly original version.
  93. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 222 . Translated from: […] makes us fall in love again with an experimental cinema that truly experiments , and a cinema of discovery that, in fact, discovers.
  94. ^ The Night of the Hunter (1955). In: Rotten Tomatoes . Accessed August 8, 2019 .
  95. ^ A b Roger Ebert : The Night of the Hunter Movie Review (1955). Retrieved September 19, 2019 . Translated from: Charles Laughton's 'The Night of the Hunter' (1955) is one of the greatest of all American films, but has never received the attention it deserves because of its lack of the proper trappings. [...] People don't know how to categorize it, so they leave it off their lists. Yet what a compelling, frightening and beautiful film it is! And how well it has survived its period. Many films from the mid-1950s, even the good ones, seem somewhat dated now, but by setting his story in an invented movie world outside conventional realism, Laughton gave it a timelessness. [...] Charles Laughton showed here that he had an original eye, and a taste for material that stretched the conventions of the movies. It is risky to combine horror and humor, and foolhardy to approach them through expressionism. For his first film, Laughton made a film like no other before or since, and with such confidence it seemed to draw on a lifetime of work.
  96. ↑ Dave Kehr: The Night of the Hunter. Retrieved September 22, 2019 . Translated from: Charles Laughton's first and only film as a director (1955) is an enduring masterpiece — dark, deep, beautiful, aglow. Robert Mitchum, in the role that most fully exploits his ferocious sexuality, is the evil preacher pursuing two orphaned children across a sinister, barren midwest; Lillian Gish is the widow who protects the children, in a depiction of maternal love worthy of her mentor, DW Griffith. Laughton's direction has Germanic overtones — not only in the expressionism that occasionally grips the image, but also in a pervasive, brooding romanticism that suggests the Erl-King of Goethe and Schubert. But ultimately the source of its style and power is mysterious — it is a film without precedent and without any real equals.
  97. ↑ Dieter Krusche (Ed.): Reclams Filmführer , 2nd edition 1973, ISBN 3-15-010205-7 .
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  100. ↑ a b Jesse Pasternack: The Legacy of The Night of the Hunter. October 8, 2018, accessed August 8, 2019 .
  101. ^ The Night of the Hunter & The Man Who Wasn't There: Hair and wigs swaying in the current. In: YouTube . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
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  103. ↑ Spike Lee in an interview with Turner Classic Movies on “The Night of the Hunter” 2012. In: YouTube . Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  104. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 217, 219 .
  105. ^ Complete National Film Registry Listing, National Film Preservation Board. In: Library of Congress . Retrieved August 8, 2019 .
  106. ↑ Ambrose Heron: Cahiers du cinéma's 100 Greatest Films. In: FILMdetail. November 23, 2008, accessed September 21, 2019 .
  107. ^ Peter Hoskin, Matthew d'Ancona: The Spectator's 50 Essential Films: Part Two | The Spectator. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  108. ^ British Film Institute: The Night of the Hunter (1955). Retrieved on August 14, 2019 .
  109. ↑ Jeffrey Couchman: The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2009, pp. 220-221 .
  110. ^ Night of the Hunter (1991). In: Internet Movie Database . Retrieved September 18, 2019 .
  111. ↑ "The Night of the Hunter". In: ARD audio play database. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
This article was added to the list of excellent articles in this version on October 13, 2019 .