The Night of the Hunter (1955)
I watched The Night of the Hunter today, and I don’t recall being this enraptured by a movie from beginning to end. Visually striking (I mean, have you seen Willa’s hair floating in the water “lazy and like meadow grass in floodwater?”) and soothing to the ear, what you get with this one of a kind film is a cross between a film noir, a Christmas movie and a dark musical.
Few films can make it work, but somehow, this one does. I’m not one for songs in film, but I still get chills when I remember how Ms Cooper sang “leaning on the everlasting arms” in that achy voice in a duet with our titular hunter, whose low baritone makes you understand how he fooled people into thinking he was truly a man of the cloth.
It’s hard to pick a favourite line or scene from the movie, because there are so many good ones, but I’ll pick the one where John and Pearl are on the run from you know who, and they’re sleeping in a barn, and John wakes up and sees Harry ride a horse as he’s singing along the path and John says, “Don’t he ever sleep?”
To that I respond, “Satan never sleeps.“