(1955)
Director: Charles Laughton
Before the Film:
Night of the Hunter was made in 1955 by Charles Laughton, a famous actor whose first and last directing jobs were this film. It stars Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish and Shelly Winters.
Acting is a complicated process by which one person takes on another personality, and yet never so totally that they lose track of where they are. Actors may be wrapped up in the characters they become, but they still know how to find their “marks” on the stage and will try to upstage actors and steal scenes and so on.
Acting has undergone many changes in the history of performance. Stage acting in ancient times without microphones would have been quite something different from what happens today with people on stage miked. Certainly the size of theaters wa significant to how far a voice could carry, and just what could be done without assistance.
In some early theaters which were small, some of the audience was virtually on the stage with the performers.
The shift to motion picture acting lead to many changes as well. Silent films rely on more stylized performance to express things in sometimes rather stereotypical ways, but good performs were able to use basic ideas and enlarge on them so that the action were for more meaningful then simple stereotypes. It certain requires some effort on the part of an audience today to “read” the performances. People who are lazy and unwilling to make that adjustment are missing out on a lot.
Film acting in early days often over dramatized and over acted. This is in part because stage acting requires that a performer who is quite some distance from the audience allow the audience to see certain expressions and so on at that distance. With film where the camera can move in to photograph an area smaller than an eyeball, such histrionics are not needed. Acting can be far more subtle.
There have been a number of people who have written about acting, the most famous being Stanislavsky. More recently Lee Strassberg (The actor’s Studio) become prominent. As that faded away, Meisner and the Neighborhood playhouse took more center stage. New techniques were developed.
We need not concern ourselves here with the differences between the schools, but basically the move has been to more and more realism in the performances. The major shift from Stanislavsky to Strassberg has been how the actor locates an emotion at any given moment to produce it on the stage. Al Reyes 6 time Peabody award winner said “There are two rules to acting (a) what you say means something and (b) what other people are saying means something.” This is very valid. My own rules are (a) an actor must be uninhibited enough to try anything (b) the actor must know which of the thing tried worked and (c) must be able to reproduce that whenever needed.
Style however, is something that is often seen as moving away from naturalism. Farces and other plays often use unnatural speech patterns and dialogue and require a non natural style of acting. The text or the style of the text may effect decisions about the way the performance is conceived. Not only is the acting style involved but the way the performance is lit, the way the ets and costumes are designd and so on. Compare for example, a performance of a play by Tennessee Williams and those of Oscar Wilde, or William Shakespeare.
On the other hand there are plays in which it is possible to use a natural style of acting, but the director opts in a different direction. This is the case in such films as The Bad Seed and this film today. The nature of the text pushes directors to opt in certain directions and we need to ask what impact the delivery of dialog has on the play’s meaning. In The Bad Seed, stylized delivery accentuates the idea that criminal behavior is genetically controlled.
What does the stylization mean in this film today?
How does the kind of stylization reflect itself in other aspects of the film?
AFTER THE FILM
What is the film about? What is its test and subtext?
What kind of story is it?
A parable? (note religious nature of story – quotes from bible, preacher etc.
How does that impact on the decision to use style?
How is the story structured? What kinds of oppositions are used?
Can equations be set up between any of these (i.e. left/bad/hate vs. right/good/love)?
Preacher is usually backwards – goes to burlesque (sex out of marriage) won’t have sex with wife (sex inside of marriage)
Religion as negative, religion as positive
(from what side of the screen do the characters enter?
Childhood and nature often connected. Adults are not. Children are first seen sitting ona lawn surrounded by flowers.
What kind of story is it? A parable? How does that impact on the decision to use style?
How is the film lit?
Sets:
Photography and Editing:
Parallel between scene of father being taken prisoner and preacher being taken. Equation makes response in John.
Sound:
Acting:
What about the music:
Diagetic is in Burlesque house and singing of preacher "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" finally sung contrapuntally with "Leaning on Jesus"
Symbolism.
Film is itself a parable. It starts with parables being told. As a result, it is not filmed like a "naturalistic" film but rather takes on a special status. This is reflected in the text, extreme lighting, stylized acting, costuming,
Love and hate
PreacherPowell and Ms. Cooper, the woman who tends children
Black and white
Right and left (hand)
Children – adult
Men – women
John – Pearl
Husband/wife Spoons; Harpers; Mrs. Harper/Powell
Violence/peaceful
Church/pray in closet
Sex as bad/ sex as good (marriage)
Married women do not come across well in the film. Mrs. Spooon, Mrs. Harper are rather strange, but Coooper is strong.
Powell, after murder always enters from left side of screen
Balance – first half of film belongs to Mitchell, second to Gish.
Morality questionable: father killed two people to get money for kids. Different reasons have different results. We feel more sympathy for father than preacher,
Kids are starving and wandering
Adults in cars, houses, etc.
Contrastive lighting dark vs,. light, good vs. evil
Use of shadow (often non-realistic – street lamp is above Preacher’s head – could not cast shadow into bedroom. Shadow of Powell often preceeds his entrance
Mrs. Harper looks like she is in a coffin when she is lying on the bed before being murdered
Cellar, house in general
Scene of murder of Mrs. Harper - almost church like
Film starts in heavens and descends to earth
Narrative about sheep in wolf's clothing = camera moves to Powell in car.
Fluid camera movement - film is about journeys: Physical journeys: Mitchem travels to town by car, then on train, then to horse. Powell and Harper go to be married. Children travel by boat
Metaphoric journeyschildren to adult, etc. What other joureys are there
Where are there wipes?
Where are there dissolves?
Are these significant? Why?
After each close escape from Preacher,Mitchum makes a cry of some sort. Children just escape through door from basement and he yells as hand is shut in door.
As the children get away in the boat, Mitchum howls.
Tries to grab children and is shot by Cooper and yells.
Sounds are borderline comic, giving a kind of relief after great tension.
Stylized delivery of lines
Body language - often anglar by Mithchum - twisted and distorted (scene of murder)
What about non-diagetic music?
knife is phallic. Murder of Mrs. Harper is almost sexual in its movements.
Religious symbols?