Gregory Morrow wrote:
> Jill wrote:
>
>> Today's Feature is "Night of the Hunter" with Robert Mitchum (snip)
>
> One of my FAVES, Jill! That scene of Shelley Winters in an old
> Model T at the bottom of the river with her throat cut is
> "haunting"...and also lyrical, in a perverse way.

What about the scene were "Uncle Bertie" is fishing and sees her sitting
down there at the bottom of the river?! Convinces himself they think he
killed her so he doesn't say a word. (sigh)

The scenes of the
> kids rafting down the river are among the most poetic ever put on
> film, harking back to the best of the silent era....
>
> It's a great pity that Charles Laughton (the director) did not make
> any more movies (this was his only one)

I recall him in Mutiny on the Bounty and the Private Life of Henry VIII.

He was a great craftsman,
> in the tradition of D. W. Griffith. Both Gish and Winters praise him
> most highly in their autobiographies. Back in the 50's, Shelley used
> to invite her actor friends to her Malibu beach house, where Laughton
> would hold acting "seminars" around a roaring fire on the beach at
> night whilst having weenie roasts....
>
Hmmmm, sounds interesting.

> Mitchum was pretty scary in _Cape Fear_, but unfortunately it's an
> inferior vehicle for his skills.
>
> Another good Mitchum flick is his 1958 "hillbilly" role in _Thunder
> Road_ - wild!
>

>> It's a great pity that Charles Laughton (the director) did not make
>> any more movies (this was his only one)

I think his inability to get beyond a sort of disingenuous homosexual ethic
convinced the studio he had too limited a vision to be a great director:

- heterosexual marriage is a union of manipulators and victims;

- only elderly spinsters can wield moral authority;

- little children are the main point of existence.

Yes, the Night of the Hunter was his only complete directorial project, but he
left some pretty impressive fragments of the aborted I, Claudius.

>I recall him in Mutiny on the Bounty and the Private Life of Henry VIII.

Billy Wilder's "Witness for the Prosecution" has him at his best. I hear The
Barrets of Wimpole Street is also pretty sharp. Certainly one of the great
character actors of the 20th Century.

Neil