The Night of the Hunter

Laughton’s remarkable Depression-era fable about innocent children caught up in a battle between good and evil.

  • Director

    Charles Laughton

  • With

    Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish, Shelley Winters, Billy Chapin

  • USA 1955. 92min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    12A

Laughton’s sole film as director is a wonderfully imaginative but faithful adaptation of Davis Grubb’s novel, set during the Depression, about two children menaced by a murderously psychopathic preacher (Mitchum) who marries their widowed mother in the hope of landing himself a fortune. Stanley Cortez’s cinematography combines fairy tale, American pastoral and pure nightmare, while Gish and Mitchum are formidably evocative of good and evil.

The screening on Wednesday 10 August will be introduced by Jason Wood, BFI Director of Public Programme and Audiences.