It's a Hard World for Little Things
A Review of "The Night of the Hunter"
by Mary Margaret C. Nussbaum

You've heard of the man with the tattooed knuckles. He's the "Reverend" Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum); on his right hand are the letters L-O-V-E, on his left hand H-A-T-E. In Charles Laughton's 1955 film, "The Night of the Hunter," Mitchum plays the sort of villain who makes ladies melt with an ice cream soda and an appraisal of their singular eyes; the sort of preacher who lights a tent revival with flaming torches, but leaves the congregation shivering with fear.

"Now what's it to be Lord," Harry asks in one of the film's first scenes, "another widow?" Widows are Harry's specialty - he woos, he weds, he kills, he collects. He is sure that his murders are just. Not that you hate killins,'" he says to God, "your book is full of killins.' But there are things you do hate, Lord, perfume-smellin' things, lacy things, things with curly hair." In a crisp black suit, carrying a switchblade and a Bible, Harry tracks that perfumed scent.

While in jail for car theft, Harry bunks with a man condemned to death (Peter Graves) who has hidden $10,000 somewhere in his house. Upon release, Harry seeks out the man's widow, Willa (Shelley Winters) and her two children, loyal John (Billy Chapin) and moon-faced Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), who carries the $10,000 hidden inside her doll.

Mrs. Spoon (Evelyn Varden), plays a chattery, fudge-making yenta to Willa and Harry. Their wedding night scene shows the film's chiaroscuro beauty. Willa, barefoot in a cotton nightgown, comes timidly to Harry in bed. Harry replies with a turned back, and venom sugared with church talk. "Marriage," he says, is "a blendin' of two spirits." Willa's body is meant "for beggetin' children, not for the lust of men." Harry is most intimate with Willa when, later, he arches over her to slit her throat.

Harry reports that Willa ran off, "her pitcher's went to the well once too often," he says, in a familiar defense. Willa is buried, her hair swimming like ethereal seaweed, at the bottom of the pond where Uncle Birdie (James Gleason) fishes. John and Pearl run to Birdie after a near escape from Harry's blade, but Birdie is too drunk to help them. They steal a skiff and head down river, surviving on handouts of boiled potatoes. One night the children take refuge in an old barn. John wakes to the sound of Harry singing the hymn that is his calling card, "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." Harry is on horseback, a dark silhouette against a blank sky. John asks the question that's usually asked of the devil, "don't he ever sleep?"

The children are saved from the river by Rachel (Lillian Gish), a sharp-tongued old women who corrals her charges with a switch and tells them stories of "King Jesus" and baby Moses. Harry is the evil tree, bearing evil fruit. Rachel becomes her name; she is "a strong tree with branches for many birds. "It's a hard world for little things," she says, without sentimentality.

Rachel is one of the stronger heroines in film. Her finest scene is a riveting duet with Harry. It is night. The only sound is cricket's song. Harry, having found Pearl and John and the money he is ready to kill for, is outside of Rachel's house and he is singing, "Leaning, leaning safe and secure from all alarms." His baritone is so slow and smooth that Ruby, one of Rachel's orphans, rises from her bed, entranced. Rachel is in her rocking chair, nearly obscured in darkness and holding a shotgun. She is the crone of any good fairy tale, never beguiled, fiercely good. She has a choice. She can let Harry claim the words that he is singing, or she can take them, and make them true again. Rachel watches Harry and she begins to sing. Her counterpoint saves the song, the children and the good book that Harry manhandled.

The studio set of "The Night of the Hunter," makes no attempt at realistic proportions or depth, houses and barns are impossibly small and foreshortened. Light falls like a blade on obscured faces and long hallways. The effect of this set and the stark lighting is mythic "The Night of the Hunter" doesn't look like a film from 1955 so much as it looks like a battered linotype that should be reprinted every year.

Rereleased in 2001, "The Night of the Hunter" is widely available. It is a happy coincidence that one of the finest films of the last century is also an elegant and chilling portrait of malevolence and murder done in the name of God, and what it means to sing the counterpoint to that old, old song.