Too many thoughts at the moment to condense into a post just yet, what with Hungarian constructivist films, Dial M for Murder, so-called god-shots, and various filmmakers' attitudes towards "amateurism" all dancing about in my happily plagued head. So I leave you with an extract from an article by Molly Haskell instead. It is from her longer piece on "The Night of the Hunter," a film which I also wrote about a month ago in this very blog.
"In the movie's thrilling and almost unbearable climax, Rachel Cooper sits with her rifle at the ready while Mitchum's unseen Harry approaches. In a "coming together" that suggests the terrifying closeness of good and evil, how God and Satan are reverse mirror images of each other, they harmonize in song. "Leaning, leaning ...," sings Harry, repeating the hauntingly seductive spiritual he has sung throughout the film. The choice of song is ironic, yet not entirely so, as it captures the quality of the man, pantherlike yet passive, as if propelled by unseen forces. "Leaning, leaning in the everlasting arms of ...." The "Leaning, leaning," drawn out melodically and as sweet as the evening breeze, seems to come from nowhere and everywhere, as if the landscape had produced it, lilting, mournful, beautiful, a siren song as compelling as the one that drove Ulysses into a frenzy, a song that should make widows and children lash themselves to the mast for protection. But then, "Leaning, leaning, safe and secure ...," Rachel sings back, unafraid -- unseduced."
--Molly Haskell on "The Night of the Hunter"
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