Review of The Night of the Hunter (1955) by Brendan G — 17 Oct 2008

A thing that I like about a lot of films and tv shows nowadays is that alot of them can't be labeled as just one genre. Neither can this film. It's a horror/film noir/fable/thriller but also, when I think about all of the genres this film is mixing doesn't the idea of a man balancing too many plates on a uni-cycle come to mind. He's trying to impress you but sometimes he falls and all of those plates crash.

This film does have a large amount of film noir/suspense and horror but doesn't the fable part of the film kind of contradict and go against the others. When seeing this I thought of Gordon Douglass's "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" and how he tried to mix the gangster genre with film noir and how the gangster genre just overpowered the film for us film noir fans.

I feel like the fable part of this film --which comes in at the very end and is not really necessary to the film in any way-- because it's the message kinda makes the film loose sight of what it was supposed to be. This is a dark story about an insane man trying to kill children and he's already killed their mother. They are alone drifting from town to town, now it's true that you could make a reference to the bible. But should you? I don't believe so. I just don't think it meshes that well as the film noir and horror aspects do.

The other problems with the film mostly lie with the actress who played Ruby. Oh lord wasn't she awful. A lot of the fault of the film lies with the early editing where you are just so taken away from the film that you forget it's the 1950's and you think that you're watching a film from the early 1900's that somehow was able to get sound through.

However, the film does have it's amazing parts. The story is quite good, MOST of the actors can hold up there own, the characters are well rounded and developed enough you can get account their motivations and the play with light and shadow is fantastic. One of the best uses of light and shadow I've ever seen.

So if you can look past an ending that somewhat falls flat on it's face, bad editing and bad acting by one of the key roles then I recommend The Night of the Hunter but if you're like me who was expecting a great story up to the end and a 'flawless' cut then you'll be kinda disappointed. I don't think this film is perfect. Sorry.