★★★½ The Night of the Hunter

[Gino: 3.5]

Gino says: 'I admired this film, in which Robert Mitchum plays a menacing preacher with a few screws loose, who has become obsessed with getting his hands on ten grand that has been hidden on his former cell-mate's property.

The story is not very complex, and perhaps because of the vintage of the film, or perhaps because child actors are better these days, I was never really 'afraid' of the guy. But there is no doubting Mitchum's coolness. And the film is poetic at times, visually and verbally.

Visually, we are talking about the great lighting and sets (In films like this and the contemporary "Touch of Evil" for example, no matter what time of day or where they are everyone is lit by a huge floodlight somewhere off-stage. I wish I were always lit that way in daily life.) A good deal of the films takes place outside, and yet very few scenes seem to be on location. So this means some really nice set design/art direction that adds to the mood of the film. Oddly, the film seems to be in 1.67:1 widescreen but was reformatted to 1.33:1 for the DVD.

3.5 stars is quite a high rating for films pre-late-60s for me. '