A Conglomerate Night

            The film, as noted by Calver Williams, is a conglomerate of genres sewn together.  I do not believe that this film is loosely sewn together; I think it is quite effectively smashed together.  The film combines elements of children’s films, burlesque, noir, thriller, musical, avant-garde, slapstick comedy, and horror.  In combining these distinct categories of film there is an eeriness effect, it’s the combination of genres we know and understand to keep us on edge and unable to predict an ending. 

            The film begins with a Christmas carol type beginning that warns against false prophets which works as an eerie foreshadowing.  Then moves into a sort of crime noir when the Preacher  (Harry) is driving through the country talking to god about his various wrongdoings that are justified due to the killing in the bible.  This being directly after the forewarning is a clearly pointed way of showing the audience who the antagonist will be in the film.  The jarring switch from heavenly children to a sinister preacher puts the audience on edge from the start. 

            The burlesque scene works as an arousal of the sexual and frightening variety.  The girl is beautiful and glamorized in that classic Hollywood cinema glow.  As Harry watches he clearly becomes aroused as he pops the knife in his pocket open and this creates the fear aspect in this particular scene.  Then the arousal is disrupted by the arrest of the preacher.

            We move to a sound of music type setting with dreary aspects of the depression embedded in the dialogue.  The tail end of a chase scene interrupts the serenity of the scene causes another uncomfortable moment.  This scene moves so quickly that all we can pull from it is that the father robbed a bank and buried the money for his children before the police caught him.  Then the scene is in the jail cell where Harry is speaking with the father and Harry hears the father say in his sleep that he hid money for his family.

            The noir aspects come in whenever the crime or murder is brought in and then the more thriller aspect of horror comes in when the scenes change towards eerie and menacing as opposed to straightforward horror.  The most clearly representative scene of this particular aspect is when the Preacher and mother are in their bed on their wedding night.  There is a drop in dialogue speed and the menacing monster starts to show himself in the didactic language of Harry.  This scene holds some aspects of avant-garde in the architecture of the room that the thrilling scene is taking place.  The deep v shape of the ceiling is reminiscent of the architecture in The Cabinet of Dr. Calligari.

            Then the film takes a small, odd, turn into slapstick randomly throughout.  Specifically when the boy smashes the preacher’s hand in the door.  This is the only noticeably out of place genre that seems to distract from the purpose of the film.

            There is a monster chase scene, not unlike the one where the monster in Frankenstein chases Dr. Frankenstein, between the preacher and the children.  This is the clearest moment of comparison that shows that Harry is the monster.

            The film then slows dramatically into an eerie float down the river.  This float lasts until the end of the river and results with Ms. Cooper finding John and Pearl in a later referenced biblical manner.  This symbolizes the safety these poor children had been looking for the whole time.  This is where the film moves into a fairly idyllic setting which mirrors a feel good family film.

            This happiness is disrupted when the Gretta Garbo type character of the lot tries to be in her own classical cinema film with Harry and divulges the information of John and Pearl’s whereabouts.  This puts the momentum back in the film and drives the action where Harry attempts to schmooze the grand and fails.  This all culminates in the arrest of the preacher, which brings us back to the crime noir film aspects and ends with the safety of the children.

            While this isn’t a perfect example of blending between genres it is purposeful and effective in its attempts.