Leaning on the Everlasting Arms

"Early in the film, Mitchum's preacher puts on a good-versus-evil pantomime for the kids, locking together his hands with their L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E knuckle tattoos. An elemental fable of sin and salvation, a study in light and shadow, 'The Night of the Hunter' is built on stark dualities. It applies a child's-eye view to a fallen adult world. It juxtaposes the crazed religiosity of Mitchum's false prophet with the biblical benevolence of Lillian Gish's maternal shepherdess, tending to a flock of suffering little children. And it combines a folkloric lyricism that is deeply American with a primal darkness profoundly out of sync with the self-image of Eisenhower-era America, which may account for the film's failure at the time."

Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times revisits Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter.