Film Response: The Night Of The Hunter
Film Response: The Night of the Hunter
“Now, you remember children how I told you last Sunday about the good Lord going up into the mountain and talking to the people. And how he said, 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God’… And then the good Lord went on to say, 'Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep 's clothing, but inwardly, they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.’ ” This opening quote by the Bible fearing woman Rachel sets the tone for the film The Night of the Hunter. This quote opens the film with a tremulous benevolence, yet there is also something sinister here, a sense that she, Rachel, is providing mercy for all the world’s wickedness, into which the audience is about to be …show more content…
plunged. As the story progresses, we see that this wickedness is embodied in the form of a corrupted reverend turned serial killer, the true wolf in sheep’s clothing. While spending a short time in prison, psychotic Harry Powell, the so called reverend, befriends Ben Harper, a bank robber who is sentenced to be hanged, hoping to find out where he has stashed ten thousand dollars. Unsuccessful in his attempts, Powell uses his charms to woo Harper’s unsuspecting widow, Willa, and her two children, John and Pearl, in an attempt to steal the fortune hidden by the woman’s dead husband. The only thing standing between Powell and the fortune are Harper’s children the only ones that know of the money’s location. After Powell kills their mother, John and Pearl run away and are taken in by Rachel Cooper, an old Bible fearing matriarch who takes in lost and orphaned children, and protects them from Reverend Powell. From the start, the film is designed to create the impression of a child’s nightmare, including the difficulty in keeping a secret, and the magical journey to safety told from a child’s point of view. This “nightmarish Mother Goose story,” as the director Charles Laughton described the film, mediates the contrasting elemental dualities such as good and evil, male and female, light and dark, and knowingness and innocence (“The Night”).
The Night of the Hunter is based on the 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb, which draws from the true story of Harry Powers who was hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
The English actor and director, Charles Laughton, was the director of the film (“The Night”). Laughton chose to hire Stanley Cortez as the cinematographer for The Night of the Hunter because of Cortez’s mastery of chiaroscuro, the use of deep progressions and subtle variations of lights and darks within an image (Barsam 186). Stanley Cortez was an American cinematographer well known for his dramatic use of light, shade, and color. He worked on over seventy films and played a very important part in the creation of a handful of transcendent masterpieces such as The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night of the Hunter, The Three Faces of Eve, and Shock Corridor. Before he got into film, Cortez worked as a designer of elegant sets for several portrait photographers’ studios. This may well have instilled in him his great talent of a strong feeling for space and an ability to move his camera through that space in such a way as to embody it in film’s two-dimensional format. His first job in the film industry was for Pathe News. During the 1920s and the early 1930s, he worked his way up the Hollywood cameraman ladder from camera assistant, to camera operator, and finally cinematographer. He managed to work for some of the greatest Hollywood cameramen, …show more content…
among them were Karl Stuss, Charles Rosher, and Arthur C. Miller. In 1941 Cortez had his big chance to work with Orson Welles on The Magnificent Ambersons. Cortez’s spatial sense told him that film among these sets would be a tremendous challenge, but Welles intuited that Cortez’s mastery of studio space was exactly what the film needed. Then in 1955 Charles Laughton gave Cortez another challenge with The Night of the Hunter. The extraordinary film demanded trial underwater shots and expressionistically lighted sets, and Cortez managed to endow the camera movements with a musical quality (Eyles). When considering the work of a cinematographer we must consider the definition of cinematography. Cinematography is referring to “the process of capturing moving images on film or a digital storage device.” It is a complex visual language that contributes to a movie’s overall meaning and story (Barsam 226). One of the many elements of visual language a cinematographer uses is lighting. Lighting is not only fundamental to the recording of images on film but also functions in shaping the way the final product looks, guiding the audiences’ eyes through the moving images, and helping to tell the movies’ story. Lighting creates the audiences’ sense of cinematic space by illuminating people or things, creating highlights and shadows, and defining shapes and texture in order to achieve expressive effects (Barsam 185 & 237).
Within the film The Night of the Hunter, Stanley Cortez’s use of lighting effectively conveys the narrative, characters, and mood of the film. In his use of lighting, Cortez also seems to repeat certain types of lighting and shadowing in certain scenes within the movie using it to create familiar images. Familiar image is the use of any image repeatedly in a movie to help stabilize the narrative being told (Barsam 154). Now let us analyze a particular scene from The Night of The Hunter to see Cortez’s use of lighting and how this creates familiar images.
Recall the scene of when Reverend Powell tracks down John and Pearl and begins to threaten the safety of Rachel Cooper and her children. Rachel sits on her porch holding a shotgun, while Reverend Powell lurks outside on a stump. In the beginning of the scene, as seen in figure 1.1, we see Reverend Powell proclaiming his presence by singing the hymn “Lean on Jesus.” His backlit silhouette emphasizes his threatening presence. This silhouette is also a familiar image to the audience because it has been associated with Powell many times before to reveal when he is most hostile, as seen in figure 1.2. Thus reinforcing the audience’s view of Reverend Powell’s dark intentions in this particular scene. Then the scene cuts to the children’s bedroom up stairs where we see another familiar use of lighting: a light shining down in the shape of a church steeple. This image was used previously right before Powell kills Pearl and John’s mother Willa (see figure 1.3). The scene then cuts to Rachel on the porch with her shotgun as we see in figure 1.4. While backlighting seems to be mostly associated with Reverend Powell and the evil that he represents, it is also used on Rachel in this particular scene. However, it is not to equate her with evil but to show that she is a worthy adversary for Powell. The scene then reverts back to the children’s room where Ruby, a child whom Rachel has been taking care of and who previously fell for the charms of Reverend Powell, awakens and the steeple shaped lighting is over her, as seen in figure 1.5. This reveals her similarity with the dead Willa and further stresses the harmful nature of Powell. In the next part of the scene in figure 1.6 we see Reverend Powell, he is no longer backlit but is lit with a low-key light, where half of him is in the shadows and the other half is in the light. This is also very familiar to the audience, because it is used frequently throughout the film to reveal Powell’s dual nature of Bible quoting reverend and deranged, psycho killer much like the writing on his fingers of love on one and hate on the other hand suggests (see figure 1.7). As the scene progresses we see Rachel again but this time she is lit with a softer light, from a different direction, which creates a halo effect as the light shines behind her as we see in figure 1.8. This emphasizes her purity and saintliness. Then the scene returns to the backlit silhouette of Rachel but this time her adversary, Reverend Powell, is shown behind the porch screen and her rifle is pointed in his direction meaning she is ready for action foreboding their impending face-off (see figure 1.9). Ruby then enters the scene with a lit candle. When Ruby enters the scene, rather than the light from her candle being used to reveal information once hidden, it rather conceals Powell by reflecting off the porch screen as we can see in figure 1.10. The scene ends with Rachel blowing out the candle and Powell nowhere to be found (Barsam).
When considering the use of lighting and shadows within The Night of the Hunter, the technique seems to parallel that of Orson Welles and particularly the film of his we previously watched, Citizen Kane.
Stanley Cortez worked as a cinematographer for both Laughton and Welles and stated that, “in his experience only two directors understood the uses and meaning of light: Orson Welles and Charles Laughton (Barsam 186).” Both directors’ careers began in the 1930s when theatrical lighting had transformed into this major element of expression. Much like Laughton and Cortez’s use of lighting and shadows in The Night of the Hunter, Welles’ use of lighting and shadows in Citizen Kane helped to create a certain ambiance or mood within a scene and also to help further develop the characters. In Citizen Kane lighting and shadows are used with great effect during the confrontation scene between Boss Gettys and Kane at Susan Alexander’s apartment. In this particular scene Susan is standing outside the door of the apartment with Gettys and Kane in the doorframe. Both men are cast completely in shadow, whereas Susan is cast completely in light. Much like the use of backlighting in association with the danger and evil of Reverend Powell in The Night of the Hunter, the significance of this type of lighting in this scene from Citizen Kane is to reveal that both men seem to be shady, maybe even evil characters, with wrong motives, while Susan is the innocent party of the quarrel (see image
1.11). She is the victim of both men’s ambitions, just like John and Pearl were the victims of Reverend Powell’s cruel ambitions (Wong).
Work Cited: Barsam, Richard M., and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film with DVD. Fourth ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &, 2013. Print.
Eyles, Allen. "Obituary: Stanley Cortez." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 22 Jan. 1998. Web. 26 Sept. 2013. .
"The Night of the Hunter (1955)." Turner Classic Movies. Turner Entertainment Networks Inc., 2013. Web. 26 Sept. 2013. .
Wong, David L. "Citizen Kane Film Analysis- Critique." Word Press. WordPress.com, 2013. Web. 26 Sept. 2013..
Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2
Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4
Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6
Figure 1.7 Figure 1.8
Figure 1.9 Figure 1.10
Figure 1.11
“Now, you remember children how I told you last Sunday about the good Lord going up into the mountain and talking to the people. And how he said, 'Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God’… And then the good Lord went on to say, 'Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep 's clothing, but inwardly, they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.’ ” This opening quote by the Bible fearing woman Rachel sets the tone for the film The Night of the Hunter. This quote opens the film with a tremulous benevolence, yet there is also something sinister here, a sense that she, Rachel, is providing mercy for all the world’s wickedness, into which the audience is about to be …show more content…
plunged. As the story progresses, we see that this wickedness is embodied in the form of a corrupted reverend turned serial killer, the true wolf in sheep’s clothing. While spending a short time in prison, psychotic Harry Powell, the so called reverend, befriends Ben Harper, a bank robber who is sentenced to be hanged, hoping to find out where he has stashed ten thousand dollars. Unsuccessful in his attempts, Powell uses his charms to woo Harper’s unsuspecting widow, Willa, and her two children, John and Pearl, in an attempt to steal the fortune hidden by the woman’s dead husband. The only thing standing between Powell and the fortune are Harper’s children the only ones that know of the money’s location. After Powell kills their mother, John and Pearl run away and are taken in by Rachel Cooper, an old Bible fearing matriarch who takes in lost and orphaned children, and protects them from Reverend Powell. From the start, the film is designed to create the impression of a child’s nightmare, including the difficulty in keeping a secret, and the magical journey to safety told from a child’s point of view. This “nightmarish Mother Goose story,” as the director Charles Laughton described the film, mediates the contrasting elemental dualities such as good and evil, male and female, light and dark, and knowingness and innocence (“The Night”).
The Night of the Hunter is based on the 1953 novel The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb, which draws from the true story of Harry Powers who was hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
The English actor and director, Charles Laughton, was the director of the film (“The Night”). Laughton chose to hire Stanley Cortez as the cinematographer for The Night of the Hunter because of Cortez’s mastery of chiaroscuro, the use of deep progressions and subtle variations of lights and darks within an image (Barsam 186). Stanley Cortez was an American cinematographer well known for his dramatic use of light, shade, and color. He worked on over seventy films and played a very important part in the creation of a handful of transcendent masterpieces such as The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night of the Hunter, The Three Faces of Eve, and Shock Corridor. Before he got into film, Cortez worked as a designer of elegant sets for several portrait photographers’ studios. This may well have instilled in him his great talent of a strong feeling for space and an ability to move his camera through that space in such a way as to embody it in film’s two-dimensional format. His first job in the film industry was for Pathe News. During the 1920s and the early 1930s, he worked his way up the Hollywood cameraman ladder from camera assistant, to camera operator, and finally cinematographer. He managed to work for some of the greatest Hollywood cameramen, …show more content…
among them were Karl Stuss, Charles Rosher, and Arthur C. Miller. In 1941 Cortez had his big chance to work with Orson Welles on The Magnificent Ambersons. Cortez’s spatial sense told him that film among these sets would be a tremendous challenge, but Welles intuited that Cortez’s mastery of studio space was exactly what the film needed. Then in 1955 Charles Laughton gave Cortez another challenge with The Night of the Hunter. The extraordinary film demanded trial underwater shots and expressionistically lighted sets, and Cortez managed to endow the camera movements with a musical quality (Eyles). When considering the work of a cinematographer we must consider the definition of cinematography. Cinematography is referring to “the process of capturing moving images on film or a digital storage device.” It is a complex visual language that contributes to a movie’s overall meaning and story (Barsam 226). One of the many elements of visual language a cinematographer uses is lighting. Lighting is not only fundamental to the recording of images on film but also functions in shaping the way the final product looks, guiding the audiences’ eyes through the moving images, and helping to tell the movies’ story. Lighting creates the audiences’ sense of cinematic space by illuminating people or things, creating highlights and shadows, and defining shapes and texture in order to achieve expressive effects (Barsam 185 & 237).
Within the film The Night of the Hunter, Stanley Cortez’s use of lighting effectively conveys the narrative, characters, and mood of the film. In his use of lighting, Cortez also seems to repeat certain types of lighting and shadowing in certain scenes within the movie using it to create familiar images. Familiar image is the use of any image repeatedly in a movie to help stabilize the narrative being told (Barsam 154). Now let us analyze a particular scene from The Night of The Hunter to see Cortez’s use of lighting and how this creates familiar images.
Recall the scene of when Reverend Powell tracks down John and Pearl and begins to threaten the safety of Rachel Cooper and her children. Rachel sits on her porch holding a shotgun, while Reverend Powell lurks outside on a stump. In the beginning of the scene, as seen in figure 1.1, we see Reverend Powell proclaiming his presence by singing the hymn “Lean on Jesus.” His backlit silhouette emphasizes his threatening presence. This silhouette is also a familiar image to the audience because it has been associated with Powell many times before to reveal when he is most hostile, as seen in figure 1.2. Thus reinforcing the audience’s view of Reverend Powell’s dark intentions in this particular scene. Then the scene cuts to the children’s bedroom up stairs where we see another familiar use of lighting: a light shining down in the shape of a church steeple. This image was used previously right before Powell kills Pearl and John’s mother Willa (see figure 1.3). The scene then cuts to Rachel on the porch with her shotgun as we see in figure 1.4. While backlighting seems to be mostly associated with Reverend Powell and the evil that he represents, it is also used on Rachel in this particular scene. However, it is not to equate her with evil but to show that she is a worthy adversary for Powell. The scene then reverts back to the children’s room where Ruby, a child whom Rachel has been taking care of and who previously fell for the charms of Reverend Powell, awakens and the steeple shaped lighting is over her, as seen in figure 1.5. This reveals her similarity with the dead Willa and further stresses the harmful nature of Powell. In the next part of the scene in figure 1.6 we see Reverend Powell, he is no longer backlit but is lit with a low-key light, where half of him is in the shadows and the other half is in the light. This is also very familiar to the audience, because it is used frequently throughout the film to reveal Powell’s dual nature of Bible quoting reverend and deranged, psycho killer much like the writing on his fingers of love on one and hate on the other hand suggests (see figure 1.7). As the scene progresses we see Rachel again but this time she is lit with a softer light, from a different direction, which creates a halo effect as the light shines behind her as we see in figure 1.8. This emphasizes her purity and saintliness. Then the scene returns to the backlit silhouette of Rachel but this time her adversary, Reverend Powell, is shown behind the porch screen and her rifle is pointed in his direction meaning she is ready for action foreboding their impending face-off (see figure 1.9). Ruby then enters the scene with a lit candle. When Ruby enters the scene, rather than the light from her candle being used to reveal information once hidden, it rather conceals Powell by reflecting off the porch screen as we can see in figure 1.10. The scene ends with Rachel blowing out the candle and Powell nowhere to be found (Barsam).
When considering the use of lighting and shadows within The Night of the Hunter, the technique seems to parallel that of Orson Welles and particularly the film of his we previously watched, Citizen Kane.
Stanley Cortez worked as a cinematographer for both Laughton and Welles and stated that, “in his experience only two directors understood the uses and meaning of light: Orson Welles and Charles Laughton (Barsam 186).” Both directors’ careers began in the 1930s when theatrical lighting had transformed into this major element of expression. Much like Laughton and Cortez’s use of lighting and shadows in The Night of the Hunter, Welles’ use of lighting and shadows in Citizen Kane helped to create a certain ambiance or mood within a scene and also to help further develop the characters. In Citizen Kane lighting and shadows are used with great effect during the confrontation scene between Boss Gettys and Kane at Susan Alexander’s apartment. In this particular scene Susan is standing outside the door of the apartment with Gettys and Kane in the doorframe. Both men are cast completely in shadow, whereas Susan is cast completely in light. Much like the use of backlighting in association with the danger and evil of Reverend Powell in The Night of the Hunter, the significance of this type of lighting in this scene from Citizen Kane is to reveal that both men seem to be shady, maybe even evil characters, with wrong motives, while Susan is the innocent party of the quarrel (see image
1.11). She is the victim of both men’s ambitions, just like John and Pearl were the victims of Reverend Powell’s cruel ambitions (Wong).
Work Cited: Barsam, Richard M., and Dave Monahan. Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film with DVD. Fourth ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton &, 2013. Print.
Eyles, Allen. "Obituary: Stanley Cortez." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 22 Jan. 1998. Web. 26 Sept. 2013. .
"The Night of the Hunter (1955)." Turner Classic Movies. Turner Entertainment Networks Inc., 2013. Web. 26 Sept. 2013. .
Wong, David L. "Citizen Kane Film Analysis- Critique." Word Press. WordPress.com, 2013. Web. 26 Sept. 2013..
Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2
Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4
Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6
Figure 1.7 Figure 1.8
Figure 1.9 Figure 1.10
Figure 1.11