Night of the Hunter (1955)

"They abide and they endure!"

This film is, I suppose, unique. Yes, it's a '50s film noir...but it feels like something else entirely. But it's a masterpiece, with Robert Mitchum's "preacher", Harry Powell, being surely one of the most fearsome villains of all time.

Incredibly, it was a flop upon its release, hence its being the one and only film that Charles Laughton ever directed. But I suppose one can see why it may not have been what an audience may have expected. It's fairly short, with a fairly simple plot. It shows a bleak and dark West Virginia of the Depression, suffused with poverty, hypocrisy and lurking evil. One mighy expect a film like this to be shot with gritty realism, but no- the camera angles, the framng and... well, the owls(!) owe far more to the German Expressionism of the silent era than anything of its own era.

Robert Mitchum is superb as a serial killer who hides behind the appearance of respectability, and the combination of his performance and the direction push the menace up to truly intense levels. The cellar scene...brr!

The other standout performance, though, is from Lilian Gish, another totem of the silent era, as Rachel, a surprisingly well-rounded, grizzled yet kindly character who feels very real, and stands for hope, decency, forgiveness and understanding. This is a film of grim beauty, of bleakness, a meditation on the suffering that is life... yet it has heart, too. One of the greatest films I've ever seen.