| BEHIND
THE SCENES WITH A MASTER
So-called “making-of” documentaries
and promotional videos have become commonplace,
even for crummy movies that don’t merit
such attention.
Unfortunately, behind-the-scenes footage
for movies of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s
is scarce, and when it exists it’s generally
brief.
Thus, Robert Gitt’s presentation of
rushes from Charles Laughton’s production
of The Night of the Hunter (1955)
at the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s
11th Festival of Preservation
last week was a rare and glorious event.
The footage is precious for several
reasons: this was the noted actor’s
only directorial effort, and while it
was a failure in 1955, its reputation
has soared in the decades since. Moreover,
Laughton tended to keep his camera running
as he coached and coaxed his actors,
especially the two children who play
leading roles in the drama. As a result,
this is not merely raw footage of one
take after another; it’s a document
of how each scene evolved, and how a
masterly actor shaped the performances
in his first effort behind the camera.
For Gitt, whose film preservation triumphs
range from the first three-strip Technicolor
feature, Becky Sharp, to the long-unseen
Budd Boetticher western drama Seven
Men from Now, this was an especially
ambitious project. He had to catalog
and digest some eight hours of material,
and then present it as a cohesive “diary”
of the film’s production. I daresay
everyone in attendance at UCLA last
week would call his efforts a great
success. The audience included Robert
Mitchum’s daughter Petrine, the film’s
youthful star Billy Chapin, and Oscar-winning
filmmaker Terry Sanders, who with his
brother Denis shot second-unit material
in the Deep South for Laughton. Any
film editor will tell you that weak
performances are often “saved” by cutting
away to other actors in a given scene.
Watching the unadulterated footage of
The Night of the Hunter reveals
that Robert Mitchum was never less than
great, take after take, as he built
his memorable portrayal of the false
prophet Preacher, that eight-year-old
Billy Chapin was a marvel of concentration
and actorly professionalism, and that
it isn’t easy to direct, or work with,
a five-year-old—but Laughton had the
tenacity, and patience, and charm, to
get the best out of little Sally Jane
Bruce.
He worked almost as hard with Shelley
Winters, but it’s difficult to tell
if this is because she didn’t meet his
expectations, or if the characterization
was simply too difficult to “nail”
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from one scene to the next. (My favorite
utterance in Bob Gitt’s two-hour-and-thirty-eight-minute
program is Laughton saying to his leading
lady in her deathbed scene, “Just smile,
Shelley, and be seraphic.”)
Laughton even replaced one actor altogether,
when the folksiness of veteran character
man Emmett Lynn, as Uncle Billy, seemed
too contrived; comparing his scenes
to those of his replacement, James Gleason,
would be instructive to any student
of acting. At this moment MGM, which
distributes The Night of the Hunter,
has made no effort to secure Bob Gitt’s
informal documentary for home video
release. I hope they do; film buffs
and students around the world should
have the opportunity to savor this fascinating
material.
*** (Also worth noting: Limelight Editions
has just published Preston Neal Jones'
impressively detailed book  Heaven
and Hell to Play with: The Filming of
the Night of the Hunter.)
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