Night of the Hunter is a film about the strength of children just as it is a film about their implicit

weakness. Without good guidance, the story world is presented as being continuously threatening,

contradictory, and confusing for children. Their instincts and good sense keep them separate from adults

who behave like children, but their need for parental love and leadership makes this distance both difficult

to sustain and painful for them to endure. With the guidance of responsible adults, the film shows that an

environment can be provided for children in which there is a correspondence between their own abilities,

and what the environment offers them. Evil can still be present, but stripped of its greatest power --

disguise -- it is no match for the powers of good. This paper will analyze how the film uses a variety of

elements to create and explore this theme. In particular, this paper will focus on how film elements change

before and after John and Pearl Harper flee Harry Powell on their river journey.

The film begins with Rachel Cooper telling either her adopted children, or both the children and the film

audience, how difficult it is to recognize false prophets. This is followed shortly afterwards by two

courtroom scenes spaced about two minutes screen time apart from one another. They are identical in

every way except in one, Powell is being sentenced, and in the other, Ben Harper is. The camera is placed

behind these characters so we cannot see their faces. So, though we know that in each shot a different man

is being tried, the film visually associates one with the other. Parallel associations between Powell and Ben

Harper are also offered in their characters’ motivations -- they both steal money, through their use of props

-- one carries a knife, the other a gun, and through their similarity in costume and location in space -- we

see both of them in prisoner’s clothing and they share the same cell. We therefore understand very early

into our viewing of the film that not only will the difficulty in spotting false prophets be a theme, but so,

too, the difficulty in spotting true ones.

The film presents Powell, at least for those whose like Ben Harper’s son John who are alert, some signs

that Powell may indeed be “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” In Spoon’s candy shop, lighting is used to

highlight the ambiguity of Powell’s true intentions. Powell is lit by low keylighting on his right side, and

thus the left side of his face is shadowed, while his right side is brightly lit. Yet in the mise-en-scene,

Powell’s right hand (screen right) has the word “hate” spelled on it, while his left hand has “love” spelled

on it. As one would likely associate lightness with love, and darkness with hate, if both had to be paired

with these emotions, there is visual dissonance between this aspect of the mise-en-scene and the lighting of
the shot.

The division between the lit and unlit sides of Powell’s face, and in the polar opposite emotions spelled

on his hands, is visual evidence early on that disharmony is a theme the film will explore. In particular, the

film is concerned with disharmony in the family unit. The film, of course, begins on this note, with the

execution of Ben Harper. With Mrs. Spoon’s pestering of Willa Harper on her need to get a new husband

which follows shortly afterwards in both screen and story time, we know that attempting to regain harmony

in the family will be what motivates the Harper family through the film. Powell appears in the Spoon’s

shop in an early attempt to exploit this need. And we are therefore also offered early visual evidence that

not only will the story involving Powell and the Harpers be of disunity rather than unity, but one in which

real power is largely located on only one side.

Powell wrestles his two hands with the one with “love” on it triumphing over the “evil” hand. A couple

of shots after this we are presented with a shot in which on the left side of the composition, Powell sits with

Pearl on his lap, and on the right side of the composition, Willa stands alongside John with her arm over his

shoulders. This shot offers visual evidence of a division of loyalties at this point of the film. Powell has

effortlessly won over Pearl, but has yet to win over either John or his mother. But Powell easily wins over

Mrs. Spoon with his moral tale of the battle between the emotions of love and hatred. And by having seen

the movement in the mise-en-scene of this shot in which Powell tells this tale, we are further prepared to

associate a balanced composition as a kind of visual deception which will not accord with future story

developments. Until the film reaches the Harper children’s river journey, harmony in a shot’s composition

does not foretell harmony in the story world: at this point fidelity between visual image and its common-

place meaning is merely a childish desire, what Mrs. Spoon would call a “pipedream.” And, indeed,

though in Powell’s telling of the battle between “hate” and “love” we will see two hands locked together

momentarily in a vertical axis, one hand eventually smothers the other one along a horizontal axis. So we

have a sense that though the shot of Powell and Pearl and of Willa and John on either side of the shot is

compositionally balanced, the tie between those on the left (Powell and Pearl) will prove to be longer

lasting than that between those on the right side of the shot (Willa and John).

Disunity is largely explored in the film through the film’s use of deep focused deep space shots. In the

picnic sequence, there are several shots with deep focus in which couplings of characters in both the
foreground and background are evidence of disharmony of the family unit. The first one has Mrs. Spoon

alongside Willa in the foreground with the Harper children in the background. The second one has Powell

along side Willa in the background; and, though this shot has no one in the foreground, it is a point of view

shot: we are seeing, in a sense, through John’s eyes. The third one has Willa and Mrs. Spoon in the

background and Powell alongside the Harper children in the foreground. This entire picnic sequence really

tells the story of how Powell manages to establish himself within the Harper family unit; but this does not

amount to family unity. This is suggested visually because the sequence ends, not with the family together,

but with a deep focus shot with Willa and Mrs. Spoon rejoicing in the background and with Powell and the

children in the foreground. The very sequence which establishes that Willa and Powell will be married

ends with Powell and Willa apart from one another. Moreover, the background figures in the last shot, in

effect, no longer matter: Mrs. Spoon, now accompanied by Willa, are like trophies on Powell’s wall.

Powell’s focus is now on those yet to be won over (the Harper children) -- and this is not an even match-up.

The last deep focused shot visually reflects this, with Powell, in a close up, looming large in the shot’s

composition with his hands literally around poor John’s neck (he is fixing John’s necktie).

Willa is not yet completely under Powell’s control, but this becomes a simple matter for Powell to effect.

The wedding night sequence uses lighting to help us understand that this sequence is about Willa becoming

synchronized with Powell. Before entering the bed chamber, Willa is facing the left side of the composition

and is well lit both by key lighting and filler lighting. When she turns out the prop light bulb, she is no

longer lit by key lighting and thus she is, momentarily, completely shadowed. When she collapses in

despair into the bed pillow, Powell rises up and, momentarily, he, too, is not lit, and thus is completely

shadowed. As he turns on the light, he now is fully lit by apparently both key and filler light. This plot

sequence has a structure of AB/BA -- a chiasmus -- in which “A” represents being lit with a prop bulb, and

“B” represents being in shadows with the bulb turned off. The repetition functions to simultaneously

establish a relationship, a similarity, between Powell and Willa, but the reversal of an identical plot

sequence suggests discord within the union. Powell’s will easily overcomes Willa’s passion, and, though

this sequence is immediately followed by a fishing scene, in the subsequent sequence of the prayer

meeting, both are similarly costumed in black formal attire. Willa is shown here confessing her sins so we

know that she has clearly internalized Powell’s previous assessment of her as nothing but a self-centred
temptress.

But a suggested psychological union between Powell and Willa creates discord between Willa and John.

This was Powell’s intention all along, and we know Powell clearly understands the significance of his

victory when he remarks to John: “It’s me your mother believes.” Though we may want to believe the

Uncle Bertie will be able to rise to the occasion, we are left with a real sense that John and Pearl are left

alone to contend with Powell. This is again suggested through the film’s use of deep space. In the

sequence in which Pearl is cutting the money into doll shapes, we are shown a shot in which Pearl and John

stand together in the foreground, while Powell is in the background looking at them (and at the camera).

This shot does, however, suggest that Powell still has to reckon with an agreement between the children

to not tell Powell where the money is hidden. But the union between the children is vulnerable. Pearl is

too young to deny herself for long the need for a parental figure. So when we are offered another deep

space shot in which Powell and Pearl are shown in the foreground exiting the bedroom leaving John behind

in the background, we are likely not surprised. After all, the first sequence that has Powell and Pearl shown

together is one in which Pearl put herself on Powell’s lap. We were prepared early on through the film’s

use of the placement of actors in the mise-en-scene to associate a bonding between the two that would

make Pearl vulnerable to Powell’s exploitation.

Powell will soon be alone with Pearl as he attempts to get her to disclose her secret. We do not actually

see this occurring on screen. This sequence is shot outside the house in which we are either offered a shot

behind Willa, who listens in, or a close-up shot of her so we can gauge her reaction to what she is hearing.

Though we can hear Pearl, and see Willa, the camera is not placed inside the house until Willa is about to

enter it. So, for a moment, all members of the Harper family are spatially displaced from one another. We

can neither see, nor hear John at all, though we know that he is still in the story world -- upstairs in his

room. It is a moment of complete disunion and disharmony in the Harper family, and thus we are prepared

for a sequence in which all film elements function to reflect and enhance Powell’s current power over the

Harper family.

Willa permits herself to be sacrificed by Powell, and her children are thereby left without an adult who

both wants, and is able to, look after them -- and who is not yet bedazzled by Powell’s charm. We were

lead to expect Willa to eventually capitulate to Powell through the earlier use of various film elements. The
film clearly has tried to associate Willa as herself being childlike. The script has Ben Harper explain to

John that his mother could not be counted on; we have seen Willa costumed in a nightgown making her

seem like a young virgin bride; and Willa seems to work at, and we first see her at, Spoon’s candy shop.

Willa is visually introduced into the film in this shot of the candy shop. It is yet another deep space shot;

and it is one in which we offered action in the mise-en-scene which foreshadows her later permanent

separation from her children. In this shot, the children stand in the foreground, and Willa and Mrs. Spoon

are talking in the background inside Spoon’s shop. The children want to approach and get some candy, but

Willa shakes her hand at them, telling them to move on. The children’s desires are frustrated, and,

visually, the two planes are not bridged by character movement in this deep space shot.

Willa’s destiny lies at the hands of Powell, and the sequence of her willing sacrifice is one in which

Powell’s psychological dominance is expressed by certain key film elements. The sequence is shot in a

“A” shaped attic, and the structure of the triangular set perimeter echoes the positioning of Powell and

Willa in some of the shots. Powell is shown standing, forming a vertical axis in the shot’s composition,

while Willa lies down on the bed, forming a horizontal axis in the shot. We also see Powell in a long shot

in this sequence with both his knife blade, and blades of light on the ceiling clearly visible in the same shot.

It is as if he not only has total control over Willa, but over his surroundings as well.

The one disharmonious element in this sequence is the nondiegetic waltz music. But this, too, suggests

Powell’s dominance over Willa, because Powell is associated with a slow, rhythmic, melodic diegetic sound

motif throughout the film (“lean on . . .”). The waltz music is a sound motif we associate with Willa. We

first hear this same waltz music in the shot of Willa preparing herself on her wedding night. Therefore,

again, the film associates Powell and Willa together by having them share common film elements. But the

relationship is unbalanced. The shared film elements reflect opposite psychological positioning with

Powell as the dominant aggressor, and Willa as the passive victim. So, exempting only the final time we

hear Powell sing, Powell’s singing is associated with a shot or sequence in which he will have power over

the other characters in the shot or sequence. Whereas the opposite is true with Willa. And, indeed, it

seems appropriate that in the sequence in which we see Willa at river’s bottom, we hear nondiegetic waltz

music playing.

Powell is at his strongest when he is patient. With patience, being, as we know, a virtue, Powell’s
patience is evidence that he is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” When his movement in the mise-en-scene is

unhurried, when his voice is paced, and rhythmic, and when his acting is mild mannered, Powell is usually

getting his way in a shot or sequence. The first screen encounter with Powell in Harper’s home town

associates his control of his voice with psychological control over a sequence. He is singing outside the

Powell house, and this singing is associated with his control over the Harper children. Powell’s singing

follows a shot of a grossly large shadow of his hat invading the children’s bedroom space. The sequence in

which Powell tells John, “We’ve got a long time together boy,” is one in which Powell’s movements in the

mise-en-scene are measured, controlled, and unhurried. In fact, he moves very little in this sequence; it is

John who will move hurriedly towards Powell in an attempt to escape outdoors, and it is John who will end

the sequence by hurriedly rushing off screen. But Powell will place himself opposite John in the shot’s

composition, and then calmly place, first his left leg to one side of John, then his right leg to John’s other

side. This action is a way for Powell to suggest to John that, now that he is John’s new father, John will

eventually have to capitulate to Powell’s wishes.

But in the film, when Powell’s movements, acting, or voice are hurried and violent, Powell is usually

unsuccessful in achieving whatever it is he is focused on in any particular shot or sequence. Powell twice

has Pearl in a situation in which she seems close to telling him where the money is hid. Both times, Powell

is overeager, and seems unable to control his anger which arises after only minimal resistance from Pearl.

The film offers little to convince us that Pearl would not eventually tell Powell the money’s location. She

says she “loves Powell,” and all indications are that her need for a new father will eventually overwhelm

her loyalty to John and to Ben Harper. Indeed, John recognizes this, and this is what motivates him to

throw the hair brush at Powell. Pearl is lonely, and so desperate for play that she cuts up some of the

money into doll shapes. What she wants from Powell is to be played with, and her responsiveness to

Powell’s riddle games is such that it motivates him to take Pearl downstairs for the first of two times Powell

seems very close to having Pearl disclose the secret. But when Powell has Pearl downstairs he is suddenly

impatient and in no mood for play. He yells at her: “Tell me you little wretch or I’ll tear your arm off!”

Pearl’s desperate need for a father is such that Powell will again have Pearl detach herself from John and

seemingly be considering telling Powell the secret location. This occurs in the banquet sequence, in which

Powell is tempting Pearl with food. But again, though we are offered signs of an attachment of Pearl to
Powell by the film’s clever use of deep space, Powell shows impatience with Pearl. We are offered a shot

with Pearl leaving John’s side in the background moving into the foreground of the shot so that the shot

ends with her along side Powell. Again Pearl, this time by her movement in the mise-en-scene away from

John to Powell, shows that she is ready to be persuaded if only Powell will be patient with her and give her

the extended attention she wants. Yet Powell quickly loses his self-control and denounces her yelling: “you

poor silly disgusting little wretch!”

Even though Powell’s control over the Harper children is such at this point of the story that he will

eventually have Pearl disclose the location, Powell’s hurried physical movement in the mise-en-scene

functions to inhibit him from obtaining the money. When he rushes at the children, we are offered a close-

up shot of Powell’s legs and the jar he will stumble over in his haste. Thus the predictable consequences of

Powell’s hurried movement establishes an association between hurried movement and a temporary elusion

of him by the Harper children. The sequence in which the children manage an escape down the river is one

which offers Powell’s most frenzied movements up to this point of the film. It is also a sequence in which

his speech is quick and commanding. He will blurt out: “children! . . . children!” This contrasts with what

we have come to associate as Powell’s characteristic voice print, exemplified by his earlier slow, drawn out,

and playfully delivered, “c h i l d -- ren.” The film has, in effect, taught us to expect that Powell will be

unsuccessful in catching the children in this sequence.

Appropriately, the river chase sequence is one which likely has our own hearts beating as rapidly as

those of the children. This is by design. The shot length tends to be short. And we switch from seeing

Powell cleaving through the swamp brush to the children anxiously -- but ever so slowly -- getting the skiff

into the water’s current. The nondiegetic music cuts back and forth from a melancholic melody -- that is a

sound motif we associate with the Harper children -- and a quick tempo, loud, harsh, and heavy horn music

that we associate with Powell. Through the use of back and forth shots, through the sheer loudness of

much of the horn music, and through the frenetic and menacing movements by Powell in the mise-en-

scene, the director Charles Laughton likely has our body literally awash in adrenalin. It will likely take

some time for our own bodily chemicals to stabilize, and it seems that Laughton understands this.

The film will soon offer us a long take shot with important symbolic significance. Laughton provides us

with the screen time we need to calm down. He uses music and aspects of the mise-en-scene for this
purpose as well. We will encounter fidelity between the diegetic and nondiegetic music. Pearl’s own

singing of the melancholic, but beautiful melody “Once upon a time,” is accompanied by a slow paced

nondiegetic “tinkling” music. This tinkling seems to us, by a smooth blending of a diegetic sound with a

nondiegetic sound element, almost generated out of, and leaves behind, Powell’s amplified and distorted

high pitched scream. This tinkling music is a sonic echo of the night stars we see in the background. We

will also hear nondiegetic harp music matched in a shot with the swaying of riverside flora. The mise-en-

scene composition of foreground animals and spider webs, and the skiff gliding calmly across the river in

the middle ground, also helps calm us.

We are saturated with sounds and imagery that “cooperate”: they are harmonious. And unlike the waltz

music whose smooth rhythm was in harmony with the flowing hair of Willa’s corpse, here there is fidelity

between the film’s images and sounds and their plot significance. The children are safe, for a time, and we

sense this. Perhaps this unexpected harmony in which what the story world offers us finally seeming to be

in accord with what we might want certain elements of a story to signify, i.e., in which anything in

“sheep’s” clothing will for certain be a “sheep,” combined with our own changing body states as we calm

down, are subliminal contributions of our own that heighten the dream-like, magical qualities of this

sequence.

Most likely, by the time we are shown a forty second long shot without camera movement, we have

calmed down enough to attend to attend to the mise-en-scene, and composition, of this very important shot.

The shot’s length and stillness function to encourage our contemplation of the significance of the shot’s

mise-en-scene. This shot is the one in which John and Pearl encounter a barn along their river journey that

they will decide to leave the river to go sleep in. The shot shows a barn and house and their equally sized,

equally proportioned, mirror-images in the water of the river. All sides of the composition are evenly

balanced; the obvious difference between the top half of the composition and the bottom half is that the

water in the foreground causes the reflected images to move slightly back and forth, while the outlines of

the top half of the composition are straight and clear edged. The shot visually suggests that there will be

two kinds of environments in the story world: one which seems like home, but is distorted, out of harmony,

the other in which there is no disharmony between an image and its meaning.

John and Pearl enter the left side of the composition almost splitting the shot’s top and bottom planes.
But they enter the shot in the river, and thus are still, in a sense, and only temporarily, associated with the

images we see in the river. But within the time frame of this shot they immediately bank their skiff and

enter the top half of the shot’s composition. The shot suggests that John and Harper are finally about to

find a proper home for themselves. John is still practically minded: he is concerned with finding a safe

place to rest, and his movement in this shot is towards the barn on the right side of the shot’s composition.

Pearl, on the other hand, is attracted to the house on the left side on the shot’s composition. Pearl will win

John over and both move up to the house to look in for a moment. Pearl has on her mind to find a home

and she says so in the next shot when she asks: “Are we home yet?” And, indeed, so, too, does John:

though strong willed and competent, John is still a child and both needs and requires adult warmth and

guidance nearly as much as Pearl does. Mercifully, both are nearly home. And as they leave on their skiff

to travel once again on the river we see an image parallel in all respects to the first long take of the house

and the barn -- except in this shot these images are no longer mirrored in the water. It is a visual sign that

the distortions of the past have finally been left behind in the film’s story world.

When the skiff docks along Rachel Cooper’s property, we are immediately offered a series of shots close

together in screen time that teach us what to expect in this new locale of the story world. The first series of

shots have Cooper ushering the children forward with a branch she whips above them. The children, along

with Cooper, are associated together along a horizontal axis. She is like a mother duck leading her

ducklings on -- and, indeed, we will soon see a mother duck with her ducklings in the mise-en-scene. Soon

afterwards, we will see a shot of five baskets along side each other, and this image will dissolve into one

with Cooper leading her children with their baskets full of apples along the market street. Rather than shots

which emphasize division and separation we are now repeatedly offered shots that show not only a family

grouped together, but a family lead by an adult. Later, when Cooper realizes that Powell is breaking into

her home, she gets Pearl to bring the children down to her, and we will see all of them grouped together in

the subsequent sequence in which Cooper and Powell confront each other in the home. As they all wait for

the police to arrive, we are again offered a shot with all of them in the composition. Cooper is shown

outside on the porch protecting the children who are either huddled together inside the house at the window

frame, or, as with John, outside, but clutching Copper’s leg. The composition suggests a family protected

by an adult figure. John no longer has the overwhelming burden of being a family’s leader. He is placed
outside, in recognition that he can deal with the outside world, but he is not yet ready to do so unaided, and

thus is shown holding onto Cooper.

There is another important sequence in the film in which division between planes of the shot suggests

two sides at odds with one another. It is also one which foretells of one side triumphing over the other; but

this time, certain film elements help us sense that the “good” will triumph over “evil.” This is the sequence

in which Powell visits the Cooper residence and both confront one another at the front of her house. This

sequence parallels the earlier sequence in which Powell introduces himself to both the Spoon and the

Harper families at Spoon’s shop. Powell, as he did then with both the Spoons and with Willa, tries to win

Cooper over with his tale of hate versus love. Aptly she notices the hand which has “hate” on it first and

this functions to motivate him to begin his tale. However, Powell begins the tale by placing the hand with

“love” inscribed on it over a ball shaped post top making it both the hand most visible for Cooper’s

consideration, and for our own -- as it is the only hand visible in the composition of the shot showing it.

Cooper is not fooled by his deceptive, calculated, gesture, and cuts off his lecture to beckon forth John.

Powell’s smooth voice, and precise, controlled movements in the mise-en-scene, have failed to win over the

one adult since they failed to win over Ben Harper at the beginning of the film.

When John enters the composition, we have an image that parallels the earlier image of Powell holding

Pearl opposite Willa and John. This time, Powell is again paired with Pearl, but John, rather than being

paired by the childish and ineffectual Willa, is paired by the mature, and formidable Cooper. And this time,

as with before, we know the shot does not foreshadow a balance of forces, because we already witnessed

Cooper verbally cutting off Powell -- a plot development which contrasts with Powell physically cutting of

John in the front hall of the Harper house. We also sense an imbalance of forces because Cooper is placed

higher up in the composition than Powell is so we have looked downwards at Powell through Cooper’s high

angle point of view shots.

This sequence is a symbolically rich face off between one who is merely a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”

and someone who is truly good. The framing of one of the shots in this sequence and a key prop in this

particular shot’s mise-en-scene help make the symbolic significance of their encounter clear to us. In a shot

in which Cooper and Powell are on the same horizontal plane, we see the branches of an apple tree located

between them in the background of the shot’s composition. We remember that it is in the fruit that Cooper
first told us we were told to look for signs to distinguish false prophets from true ones. Cooper, the owner

of the apple tree, and who tends to children who have been visually associated with fruit in the film, is the

first (exempting, possibly, Ben Harper) unambiguously both good and strong willed adult we have

encountered. And true goodness, though rare, is shown to be neither fooled nor intimidated by the forces

of evil. Appropriately, this time, Powell, and not the Harper children, will be the one who will need to

escape.

Powell returns to engage with Cooper; but we know, unlike as was the case in Harper’s home town, that

his powers, though considerable, are now constrained. As he leaves Cooper’s property, Powell yells at her:

“I’ll be back when it is dark!” He is still a dangerous threat, and we will witness a suspenseful

confrontation, but he has become an obvious creature of the night, a hateful creature. He cannot win

Cooper over with his powers of deception, and we likely think of this moment of his failure as representing

a drastic loss of power for Powell. It is, after-all, the power of deception that won over virtually every one

we encounter in Harper’s home town, including Willa, the sole remaining adult of the Harper family.

By defeating Powell, Cooper shows that she is an able protector of her children. She has also been

shown as the family’s head -- its leader. But Cooper does not infantilise her children: she wants them to

grow into responsible adults and guardians like herself. For example, she tells us that she sees in Ruby a

fine future mother. She has the children do tasks for which they are responsible, but they are tasks that can

be managed by the children she assigns them to. She has Ruby round up the other children. She has John

fetch an apple. If they misbehave, the nature and degree of the misdeed is measured, and an appropriate

response is offered by Cooper. So she will spank John when he runs away from her because he is new to

the Cooper clan and needs to learn that his behaviour is noticed and will be responded to. But she chooses

to console Ruby when she admits to her lies, because Cooper understands that Ruby’s desire for the

attention of men is both natural and inevitable for a young adult woman. Cooper has erred in imagining

Ruby only as a future mother. She is at fault as much as Ruby is.

Cooper’s reactions to her children are just and appropriate, and thus opposite to the extreme and

inappropriate reactions the Harper children had to deal with in their home town. In the first part of the film,

when John is caught in a lie, he will have Powell put a knife to his neck. John, rather than being told to

fetch apples, is told by his own father at the beginning of the film to swear to safeguard a fortune until he is
fully grown, to keep Pearl safe, and to not ever tell his mother about the money. John wanted none of this;

neither did Pearl. Pearl just wants a father. John, rather than wanting enough money to “buy a tabernacle,”

simply wants enough money to buy the one item he covets: a watch. Early in the film we are offered a

medium shot of a window display of watches. This prop reappears near the end of the film -- it is Cooper’s

Christmas gift to John. This gift is a symbol that John will now be able to enjoy an adolescence rather than

being forced to prematurely act the role of an adult -- something he neither wants nor is ready for.

Appropriately, just proportion will restored to the key prop of Night of the Hunter: the doll will be emptied

of all its money. Cooper is alarmed, but it is no matter: it is a cathartic act for John, and Pearl no longer

needs to make paper friends, she has herself new friends, and a new family.

Night of the Hunter, then, offers us a plot development which proves Mrs. Spoon quite wrong: Rachel

Cooper is clearly a single mother who can take care of her children without the aid of a husband. We might

expect that with this message the film might be out of place for the 1950’s, but this is not the case: the

film’s meaning is actually symptomatic of this decade. The film is set in the depression, but there is a sense

in which the film’s story development is better understood as a timeline spanning decades, rather than days.

The film begins with the introduction of an obscene amount of money into the plot, in the river sequence

we have children begging for potatoes and hiding in barns for shelter, and the film ends with a moderately

prosperous home environment. In a sense, the film has taken us through the 1920’s -- with its financial

excesses, through the depression -- with its stark poverty, to the 1950’s: in which Americans finally have

the money for spending on “unessential” items again. The American dream of the 1950’s was to own a

home, and to prioritize the family as a complete and self-sufficient harmonious unit. Cooper, in offering

John and Pearl a chance to grow up safe and secure within the confines of her home, is in this sense as

much an embodiment of cultural themes of that time as that paragon of the 1950’s: Dwight Eisenhower.

The Night of the Hunter is a story about the restoration of just proportion, and the triumph of good over

evil. Why the film was so poorly received is a real puzzle. It offers us an unfolding of a world-view as

American as apple pie.