
The Night of the Hunter. 1955. USA. Directed by Charles Laughton. Screenplay by James Agee, based on the novel by Davis Grubb. With Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish. 35mm. 92 min.
Truffaut asks Hitchcock about The Night of the Hunter, which the latter admits he’s never seen: “Robert Mitchum plays the preacher of one of those secret, strange religious sects. The word love was tattooed on one of his hands and the word hate on the other. His sermon consisted in a sort of pathetic struggle between the two hands. It was quite effective. When I saw that, it occurred to me that your pictures also describe the conflict between good and evil.”