(1955) ****
This film is based on Davis Grubb's Depression-era novel about a serial killer preacher in relentless pursuit of two orphans who he knows have a bunch of stolen money in their possession. The preacher, played stunningly by Robert Mitchum is a real smooth character. He has the whole town snowed into thinking he has only the welfare of the children in mind. When in fact he travels from town to town preying on grieving widows. He cleans them out of their inheritance and slaughters them before leaving town. When he gets nabbed for car theft, he is sent to prison and shares a cell with Ben Harper, a condemned murderer. The preacher tries to get Ben to tell him where he stashed the $10,000 he stole but he refuses. When he gets out he pursues Ben's widow, but she is also clueless. Once he discovers that only Ben's nine-year-old son, John and four-year-old daughter, Pearl know where the money is, he will stop at nothing to get it.
This film is beautifully shot. The play on shadows & the camera angles. Each scene visually tells the story before the dialog even begins. It almost has the feel of an old Twilight Zone episode. But the performances are the real clincher here. Robert Mitchum is flawless, backed by Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The story is compelling and I truly felt scared for these kids. I love it when a movie takes me through a range of emotions and this one did just that.
If I had one complaint about the film, and it certainly isn't anything I would consider as a real complaint, more like a minor nitpick. It's that at one point there are a bunch of kids singing a “Hing,Hang,Hung” song. This really reminded me of that endless “Now,Now,Now” song in Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds” but thankfully it didn't drone on quite so long. Now I'm just being silly, who cares if some kids sang an annoying song, the movie was really great. Such a breath of fresh air after watching those two terrible flicks. Great stuff!
7 comments:
Nice! This is one I did last year, and I liked it as much as you did.
Wasn't Mitchum just fantastic!
I just saw this for the first time and thought it was amazing. I'm so glad I'm not alone.
I was an old film junkie as a kid so I've seen so many of them over and over. Amazingly, I had never seen this before either. That's 2 this year that I discovered. Glad you guys liked it too.
Sounds great! Those images are beautiful. *sigh* So many movies, so little time...
It's a good one to watch alongside a German expressionist movie--I think I watched around the same time I watched Caligari, and you could really see how Night was playing off of that style. Composition of shots, shadows, angles, artificiality of the sets, etc.
I was urged to see this just for the underwater scene. What a great movie.
I love that shot of him on the staircase.
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