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Thriller

The Night of the Hunter

Durée
92 minBFI 92-minute presentation Sources des versions ↓

Two children flee a murderous preacher through an American landscape turned into a dream.

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Langue
English
MysteryBleak Idéal pour commencer · Modéré Thriller

Édité par Monocurator

The Night of the Hunter: Children drift in a small boat through layered paper reeds beneath a crescent moon.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

The Night of the Hunter: John and his father's promise

Open after watching to explore how the promise shapes John's later response.

John, the doll and the promise to his father · Scene spoilers

AFI's synopsis links the outburst to John's memory of his father Ben's arrest. Before that earlier arrest, Ben makes John and Pearl promise to keep the stolen money's hiding place secret. John sees the police take Ben away.

Later, when officers arrest Powell, John hits him with Pearl's doll while the arrested man lies on the ground. The doll breaks open and the cash spills out. John begs his father to take the money back; AFI describes a child who can no longer bear the strain.

On another viewing, return to Ben's demand for secrecy. It gives the money a place in John's relationship with his father, beyond its value to Powell. That connection helps explain the outburst without treating it as proof that John has begun to trust or forgive Powell.

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À quoi s’attendre

The Night of the Hunter is singular American Gothic: part crime story, fairy tale, religious nightmare, and child’s-eye odyssey. Robert Mitchum’s false preacher Harry Powell turns hymns and scripture into instruments of pursuit, while Charles Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez shape houses, riverbanks, and night skies into stark symbolic spaces. The children’s flight shifts the film away from adult realism toward an eerie protective dream. Initially unsuccessful, it became enormously influential because its stylization makes evil both theatrically obvious and socially persuasive.

Comment aborder le film

Accept the abrupt changes in tone: menace, humour, expressionist design, and storybook calm all belong to the children’s unstable world. The film is less interested in realistic police procedure than in how danger appears to a child. Listen for the repeated hymn, which can signal threat or resistance depending on who carries it.

À savoir

Une brève note non exhaustive Includes child endangerment, murder, domestic abuse, religious manipulation, threats, corpses, and intense pursuit.
Momo's Note Peut contenir des révélations sur l’intrigue Qui est Momo ? → (S’ouvre en anglais)

A repeated song changes force when another voice takes it up.

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Powell uses a hymn to announce himself, but the film eventually lets another voice answer. That matters to me. The children cannot defeat his performance by arguing with it; they survive by reaching a different kind of authority, one grounded in shelter, patience, and watchfulness.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Générique et versions

Générique
Distribution
Robert Mitchum · Shelley Winters — Willa · Lillian Gish
Scénario
James Agee
Production
Paul Gregory
Photographie
Stanley Cortez

Carte des versions

Sources des données

Pour regarder et lire

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Pour poursuivre la découverte

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