In The Night Of The Hunter (1955) there are two themes, one hiding under the other. The first has to do with the dangers of the naivete of the religious, how the bold rogue can use religious sensibilities to insinuate themselves into a community. In a sense, it’s taking advantage of Turchin’s concept (borrowed from the Muslims) of asabiya, which is communal trust extended to strangers outside of typical geographical and cultural boundaries, anchored by one or more shared things, such as religion, common existential enemies, and the like. The bold rogue, speaking the lingo of the community, thus labels himself a member of same, inherits the extended trust, and, with no true anchor to the community, takes advantage of that trust to reap a windfall.
But below, and supporting the first theme, is the second theme: the consequences of deceit. This is both of others and of self, and while the delicious snarkiness of watching the religious, in their humility-based confidence, being mislead has a certain satisfactory zeitgeist for the non-believer (or at least those not of the Christian fundamentalist community), it’s the second, underlying theme that brings some real punch to this story.
It’s the 1930s, and the Reverend Harry Powell is a regular one-man crime wave. He kills, particularly women to whom he’s married, he thieves, he watches porn to get it on – and he cries out the word of the Lord all the while, his strong baritone voice bringing authority and pushing the buttons of all who’ve grown up on such performances. In particular, his tattooed hands let him give impressive performances of Biblical stories, a real hook into the shared experience of the community.
And, in some obscure way, he really believes he’s doing God’s will.
But when he’s caught with a stolen car, he’s shocked to receive a short prison sentence. However, God works in mysterious ways, so it’s really no surprise to Powell that he rooms, for a short while, with a condemned man. Ben Harper, fed up with the banks’ abuse of the little man during this time in the Great Depression, robbed a bank and killed two men during the escape. He rushed home with the loot and hides it, making his children, 8 year old John and 4 year old Pearl, swear to never reveal its hiding place; his wife, Willa, isn’t present to witness the hiding. The cops show up and arrest him, but never find the $10,000.
And to Powell he reveals nothing, but Powell knows the money was never found. He’s no fool!
Harper goes the way of the condemned man, and Powell takes his honey voice down the Ohio River to Harper’s home. It’s a great place for Powell: good God-fearin’ folks with whom he fits right in, or so it seems. In particular, the elderly ice cream store owner Icey Spoon, pillar of the community, or know-it-all bully, depending on how you look at these things, sees in Powell just what she wants to see: a preacher full of the spirit of God, but lacking a wife.
And she sees Willa Harper, now a widow and a single working mother of two children. Willa works for Icey, and under her influence, Willa permits Powell to court her as a preacher might, and soon enough win her. But the illusion she had built up of Powell over just a few days is stripped away the first night: no sex, and a brutal psychological put down. One illusion exchanged for another, and in the following weeks she becomes the lead in the little dramas they’re putting on for the townsfolk, admitting to outlandish lusts, titillating the audience, and satisfying their religious proclivities to the point of riot.
All the while, though, Powell’s building his own illusion: that the money Harper stole and hid should be his. This illusion shreds any other illusion for Willa’s son John, who remembers his promise to his father and refuses to reveal its whereabouts, first to indirect approaches from Powell, and then refusing direct orders.
But young Pearl, she is less coherent, less devoted to promises, and John worries.
The family discord rises and rises, and one night, what with John’s misbehaviors and Powell’s psychological abuses, Willa summons the courage to rip the illusion from her eyes and see the man she has married: cold, hateful, spiteful – and looking for money. She accuses him, and, in a hint of what’s to come, when he draws a knife in rage, she neither fights nor screams: its kiss is not horror, but sweet surcease for her troubled life, and she leaves with scarcely the expected murmur.
The next morning, Powell spreads the word that she has left him, that he had been denied sex, that she had given in to her unnatural lusts and was on the road. Now John and Pearl must survive on their own, and Pearl lets slip that she has the money. Before Powell can relieve her of it, though, John arranges for the sky to fall on him. Opportunity has arisen, and they are out the door and soon, barely out of Powell’s grasp, on a skiff, floating down the Ohio River.
An adventure or two later, John and Pearl are brought under the brusque care of Rachel Cooper, a woman with three children already under her dominion – none of them her’s. She’s been through illusion and its dispersal, as she mentions the loss of a son to worldliness, but she’s found a role, taking care of children who would otherwise be a burden on working mothers, or have no parents at all, and John and Pearl find she’s strict but caring.
Powell, though, is relentless, and finds where they’re located. He comes slinking along, but now he’s found someone who has had enough of illusion, of her own, her children, and those she cares for: Rachel Cooper. Caught in a lie or two, Powell still believes it’s his game to win until Cooper taps him between the shoulder blades with a shotgun.
But, you know, God is on Powell’s side, and not only does he return in the night, he discards the dated approach of sneaking, and instead serenades Cooper and her little family from the front lawn. Is he demonstrating his Godliness? Or his manhood? Cooper is having none of it, singing her own version, and then that old shotgun turns out to be loaded and accurate. Again, as with Willa, an atypical reaction: Powell, crying out wildly, runs for the barn. He’s not badly injured, except perhaps in the psyche, as he has been hit, and through the agency of … a woman.
But this story isn’t over just yet. When State Troopers show up the next morning at Cooper’s call, Powell stumbles from the barn and is easily taken – and then John cannot stand to see Powell arrested and assaults the officers, and now it’s Pearl that must try to rescue John. Later, at trial, John cannot testify, overcome as he is with this misplaced loyalty to his persecutor.
But it doesn’t matter, as Willa’s body, the slit throat negating any assertion that she drowned, testifies mutely to Powell’s guilt, as does his history of other incidents with now-dead wives. Powell is incoherent and bewildered.
And the townsfolk, led by Icey herself, husband right behind her, arrive after sentencing, shrieking Lynch him! Their hate-twisted faces, their abrogation of the tenets of their faith, are a testament to the consequences of their own illusions concerning men who appear spouting those God-fearing verses. It’s not their naivete to point at, but the absolutely infernal rage to fear – these are not God-fearing Christians, no, not when their illusions are pierced and they are shown to be such fools that a women is dead and her children endangered.
In this situation, they can either change themselves to lessen the chances of it happening again, or take bloody vengeance, and by God the latter is easier, because they shouldn’t have been wrong in the first place, because God is with them.
Right?
Anchored by a script with a wonderful ear for dialog, strong performances by top actors, excellent pacing, authentic staging, and some interesting cinematography, it’s hard to find fault. The worshipful viewer may not enjoy it, and even I found it dark enough that I put off watching the second half for a few days until my mood had brightened.
But Recommended. This one is worth your time.
