Film · 1955 · Crime thriller
The Night of the Hunter
Directed by Charles Laughton
1955
★ 8.4 editorial score
Charles Laughton never directed again after it failed, and critics have spent seventy years calling it a masterpiece: a preacher with tattooed knuckles and two children on a river.
“Charles Laughton showed here that he had an original eye, and a taste for material that stretched the conventions of the movies. It is risky to combine horror and humor, and foolhardy to approach them through expressionism. For his first film, Laughton made a film like no other before or since, and with such confidence it seemed to draw on a lifetime of work.”
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