The Night of the Hunter
d. Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter would be my choice for the greatest fairy tale ever filmed. Though this may seem like a strange title for a film whose main character, preacher Harry Powell, goes around killing women and stealing money; not only that, but he's doing it all in the name of God, and he believes every word he says.
Powell, brilliant played by Robert Mitchum, ends up in prison at the beginning of the film for stealing a car. There, he meets Ben Harper, who recently murdered two people and stole $10,000. Only his two kids, John and Pearl, back home know that he hid it in Pearl's doll. The preacher manages to make Ben talk in his sleep, and finds out that he's got a widow and two kids. Soon after Ben's hanging, Powell drives down to the family's home and preceeds to meet the family, marry Willa Harper, murder Harper, and to try to get the secret out of the two kids.
Ben's kids, particularly John, prove to be stronger than their mother; they manage to escape from Powell through the use of an old raft they take down the river (in one of the best scenes in the film). John and Pearl find refuge in the home of a nice old lady, Rachel Cooper, who already takes care of about four kids that aren't her own. Now she has two more mouths to feed, as well as protect from the preacher, who has found where they live and is coming for the doll.
That's about all there is for the plot in The Night of the Hunter; but perhaps the film's greatest achievement is the visual style. As a complete departure from other American films of the 1950s, it resembles German expressionism more than anything else. The blatant use of studio sets for the outdoor scenes (most notably the river scene with its painted stars) convince the viewer that all of the horrible things that happen to these kids would not really happen in real life, hence the title of best fairy tale ever made (after all, there's a happy ending, I think). Technology has come a long way since 1955, and directors have figured out how much they can do with film, but I think there's not a more effective tool for horror stories - or any film for that matter - than shadowy black-and-white compositions like the ones in The Night of the Hunter.
Laughton's compositions are quite amazing here, and it would have been great to see where he was heading had he not only directed this one film. Stanley Cortez's cinematography is as close as movies have come to resembling a complete dreamscape (other examples I'm thinking of are Buñuel's films, Altman's 3 Women, Bergman's Persona, and the work of David Lynch). In short, The Night of the Hunter is one of the key films of the first century of cinema.
