Night of the Hunter

This evening Chris and I went to Theatre Clwyd (twice in one week!) to see the classic The Night of the Hunter (1955) Now I have not seen this creepy little tale for years, so it was a real treat to watch it in the cinema rather than just catch it on TCM in the wee small hours of the morning! and I had forgotten just how chilling some scenes actually were.
Night of the Hunter is a weird child's nightmare of a film journey....with menacing shadows at windows, a childs difficulty in keeping secrets, a fantasy flight to safety and a truly terrifying baddie (The Preacher serial killer Robert Mitchum). Other complex elements such as heaven and earth (or under-the-earth), male and female, light and dark, good and evil, knowingness and innocence, and other polarizations including equating the Preacher with the devil are all viewed from a child's perspective, and are presented in a stylized,inventive and unsettling cinematic style.
It is an ambitious film that doesn't always "work" but certain sequences (the childrens' flight to safety down the river and the final climatic duel between bogus Preacher and the God fearing widow Lillian Gish linger long in your mind......
I wanted to discuss all this with Chris as we left.... but all he said was that he enjoyed it!
when I asked why.... He said simply "it was short"