The Night of the Hunter, a cinematographic aesthetic
by Damien Ziegler
Publisher : Editions Lett Motif (June 2021)
Language : French
Number of pages : 280 pages / 200 stills from the film
Film cursed because of the critical indifference and the financial failure encountered on its release, cult film by the enthusiasm it is able to arouse today, The hunter's night is decked out in general qualifiers that reflect the difficulty in identifying its true nature.
Directed by Charles Laughton, British actor at the end of his career, the film brings together past (Lillian Gish, muse of David Griffith during the 1910s) and present (Robert Mitchum, accustomed to bad boy roles in the 1940s) to tell the singular story of a diabolical preacher persecuting two children in order to get their hands on a nest egg.
Stuffed with chiseled images like a children's story, the narration aspires to a certain timelessness. This book aims to explore the inner world of the film through a chronological and exhaustive analysis of the processes implemented by Laughton and his collaborators to convince the viewer.