The Night Of The Hunter (1955

Perhaps the patron saint of directors who made a single, great film is Charles Laughton, whose only directing credit is The Night Of The Hunter, a fairy-tale noir about an evil preacher (Robert Mitchum) chasing after a couple of kids and a bundle of cash. Laughton made Hunter after spending two decades acting in movies, and these days actors who take up directing are often cited as being particularly attentive to performance. But while Mitchum’s work in the film is iconic and the rest of the cast does well with the stylized dialogue and tone, Laughton supposedly so disliked the two main child actors that they (according to various lore) took most of their direction from Mitchum. Whatever happened on set, it worked for the film: The kids’ not-quite-natural performances only contribute to the eerie spell cast by Laughton’s bold visuals. Some of the film’s minimalist, selectively lit sets could have looked staged, but Laughton’s use of expressionist shadows and off-kilter angles transports them out of the soundstage and into a stranger, more vivid realm. Beyond its unforgettable images, Night also stands out because Laughton didn’t have a chance to follow it up and further develop his distinctive style. After the movie’s commercial failure, he wasn’t able to get another directing project off the ground, and he died seven years later. His approach was instead adopted by the many filmmakers who have since cited The Night Of The Hunter as a major influence. [Jesse Hassenger]