This interesting failure was directed by Charles Laughton in his only directing foray and stars Shelly Winters and Robert Mitchum. You may also recognize Lillian Gish and Peter Graves. There's some dispute on how to characterize the film (film noir, horror, melodrama), and I will be so bold as to say that this is one of the flaws in Laughton's vision - he didn't get his vision clearly on the screen.
The story is something like this. It's the Depression. Ben (Graves) is married to Willa (Winters), and they have two kids. Ben is involved in a robbery/murder and hides $10,000, telling only his two kids where the cash is. Ben is caught and sentenced to hang. His cell mate is Mitchum's character, Harry Powell. I guess in the Thirties you didn't have a Death Row, since Powell is in for 30 days for stealing a car. Powell knows the ten grand was never found; Ben mumbles enough in his sleep to let Powell know the kids know the location of the loot. Ben is hanged; Powell serves his time and hightails it to the widow's home.
Powell holds himself out as a preacher, and his relationship with his lord is unique. Mitchum is enthralling as Reverend Powell. Powell has made his living seducing more or less well-to-do widows, murdering them, and taking their money. He marries Willa and starts working on getting the kids to tell him where the money is hidden. He murders Willa, and the two kids hop on their rowboat and float down the river with the reverend in hot pursuit. We follow the story to the end, Powell gets his just reward, the money is returned, and some people live more or less happily ever after in the Depression.
What makes the movie both a failure and worth watching is Laughton's vision of the tale and Stanley Cortez's cinematography. I'm not sure who did the sets and the lighting, but I'll take those designs as my clues that Laughton was making a moral tale along the lines of Homer's "Odyssey" with German Expressionism very much in the forefront. In some scenes, Willa's bedroom is a normal room with an attached bathroom, bed, and the like. In other scenes, the room becomes a cathedral and hell at the same time. In the back of the scene, the ceiling has become highly arched with inset windows, and that part of the set is over lit, almost whited out. This is where Brother Powell holds forth on his sermon of hate and love, communing with his god. In the foreground of the set, Willa is in her bed set on total blackness; she's lighted but in and on a void. The former natural realism of the bedroom is totally gone, and we know we're in another universe where Powell is god, master of love and hate, life and death. And where Powell is master, there's not that much difference between love and hate, and not that great a gulf between life and death. And the set shows us who's where in the grand scheme of things. *Spoilers below for those who haven't seen the movie, so don't look.
Laughton and Cortez have some great scenes and shots as the two kids float down the river on the Odyssey to escape Powell, but Laughton never really ties things together. We just have a serious of beautifully composed and filmed scenes. And they are beautiful. Laughton had magnificent visions, but his storytelling lets us down. Nevertheless, "The Night of the Hunter" is worth watching for the same reasons as "Metropolis" and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" -- Laughton was a genius in getting beautiful images on the screen.
With regard to the category of the film, I'll take a stab at it. I'd say that those who think this is a film noir have missed the boat. Some hold that film noir had its roots in Expressionism, which may be. But film noir (in my take on it) had more than darkly lit scenes to create the genre. The text of the film was cynicism shown by a bunch of losers who know they'll never win but have nothing to lose by going through whatever motions they can scare up a motive for. The general disposition of the characters is that no one can be trusted, loss is inevitable, and all their misdeeds will inevitably be punished. Film noir is more than just dark lighting.
In "The Night of the Hunter," Laughton goes more to Expressionism, much more. The sets he uses are highly stylized; they may be realistic in some scenes, but in key scenes the same room will be transformed into some symbolic statement. The transformation of Willa's bedroom, for example, where it becomes a cathedral and a void, heaven and hell. Powell's introduction to the family is by the casting of his silhouette on the wall of the children's bedroom. His constant song is "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms," and in one mesmerizing scene he sings it in round with Rachel (Gish), the devil counterpointed by a saint. I'd say the theme of "The Night of the Hunter" is more akin to madness than to cynical loss.
Powell's pursuit of the children, again in my opinion, has less to do with horror than with his mad obsession with the money. He cares nothing for them. His attempts to do them in are not based on his evilness but on his callous regard for money, his callous disregard for human life in his way. In horror movies there is a monster who destroys simply because he's the monster. It's in the script. Here Powell destroys because he's insane, driven by his lust for money. God wills his actions to set the world right by punishing sexuality while he steals the gold.
Another key to the Expressionist bent of the movie is Mitchum's performance. Often his acting is completely believable and natural, but there are many scenes where Powell is off-kilter, the acting is strange. I would suggest that Mitchum's performance has crossed into symbolism, as when Willa's room transforms from a room to the symbol of the relationship between Powell and Willa. Powell has crossed from our reality into his, and we need to understand with his understanding, not ours. Mitchum's ability to swing from completely realistic acting to symbolism gave me new respect for his talent.
It's a shame Laughton couldn't transfer his vision from his mind to the screen. His use of chiaroscuro is a lesson for many directors, yet he didn't allow it to take over the entire movie, using natural lighting extremely well in his idyllic journey scenes. Maybe Laughton should have been a cinematographer.
I have two movies that I class as noble failures: "Liquid Sky" and "Donnie Darko," the theatrical release, not the director's cut. ("Night of the Hunter" doesn't reach their level of noble, though.) Both are remarkable films that failed at the box office and are polarizing to this day.
*SPOILERS-----------
Powell has HATE tattooed on the knuckles of his left hand and LOVE on the knuckles of his right. (Some will know the ancient word for left is sinister and for right is droit.) He does a routine where hate and love struggle and love overpowers. Powell also has a switchblade knife. And he hates sex and sexuality. We see him in a burlesque theater watching a woman do a sensual dance on stage. The camera drops from his face to his waist, and the steel blade pops out of his pocket. Is this phallic? You bet. This is our first symbolic hint of the reverend's proclivities. It turns out he hates all women; on his wedding night with Willa, he coldly refuses sex with her.
In the scene where he murders her, the symbolism is running rampant, and you may notice that he stabs her with his blade held in the hand tattooed with LOVE. The reverend is a twisted man indeed.