Response #4

Examining the Style and Elements of The Night of the Hunter

 I feel that a film such as The Night of the Hunter (1955) is nearly individual in its ability to defy the expectations of a first-time viewer both in structure and presentation. The unexpected ways in which the plot unfolds for the watcher is almost akin to the children's trip down the river where they have no possible way of knowing what will happen next. This unexpectedness isn't just constrained to plot details; however, but can also be found in the multiple styles of the film itself which change from genre to genre.

     

The film stays mostly in the thriller genre but often blends in others such as almost out of place slapstick comedy scenes like when the children are trying to escape from Powell in the basement and they manage to drop a shelf full of bottles on his head, resulting in an oddly comedic groan from the preacher. Less intrusive I think is the sudden Christmas scene at the ending of the movie which even though it comes out of left field, I believe it has its place owing to certain interpretations that connect Preacher Powell with the Old Testament and Rachel Cooper with the New Testament. In the Christian New Testament, other than Easter, Christmas is the most notable holiday so I think it's only fitting that the triumph of Cooper over Powell (N.T. over O.T.) is celebrated by a holiday that is only present in the N.T. Also, considering that Christmas is the time when Jesus was born, maybe the film is positing an analogy of Jesus' birth with the birth of a new life for the children with Ms. Cooper?

      

Another genre that is somewhat strangely included is the musical; singing plays a prominent role in the film with some interludes of song happening every once in a while for a couple minutes at a time. The most notable of these being Powell's reoccurring “Leaning” song and Pearl's song when she and her brother have first escaped out into the river. Powell's song is clearly being played for irony seeing as he definitely does not intend to leave the children “safe and secure from all alarms” as he proclaims in the hymn. This incongruity between the lyrics of the song and his true intentions only add to two-facedness of the preacher's character. On the other hand, Pearl's song reveals nothing about her sorta bland character, but is really more of a mood-setter that contributes to the odd dreamy atmosphere that can be traced at certain parts of the film.

 

There are other moments like this throughout the film that also create this sort of dreamlike sensation such as when we see Willa dead at the bottom of the lake, when the children are sleeping at the top of the barn, and when Powell is about to kill Willa. Some of the factors that can be found in each of these scenes that I think cause this atmosphere is the way that the camera is used and the stylized sets. Take the lake scene for example, the very fact that we are seeing underwater already adds a sort of slow-motion/dazed feeling which makes it feel as though it were out of a dream. Add to that the way that the camera seems to wordlessly linger in on Willa's dead body for an extended period of time along with the muffled and tottering music and it really seems to create that dreamy atmosphere in the scene.