Charles Laughton

*****
5/5

Charles Laughton's only film as a director is one of the great masterpieces of American cinema, a movie so strangely repellent, so poetic and so utterly hypnotic that it sadly never found an audience. It features Robert Mitchum's finest screen performance as a bogus priest and psychopath who has 'love' and 'hate' tattooed on his knuckles. Mitchum's always imposing, menacing presence is heightened by Laughton to an extraordinary degree, and this stunning collaboration is enhanced by Lillian Gish's portrayal of a gun-toting spinster. Set during the depression in a rural backwater, this is a fairy tale turned into a dark night of the soul. Remade, unnecessarily in 1991 as a TV movie.
 

(1955)
US   B/W   88 mins