Heaven and Hell to Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter (Limelight) Review

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(More customer reviews)Heaven & Hell To Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter by Preston Neal Jones is by no means a trivial read, and it is its sheer density that makes it so special.Jones compiled numerous interviews and basically provides an oral history of what many consider a compelling masterpiece, offering as thorough a history as one could ask for.Yes, there is much detail here, and perhaps those not familiar with Laughton's film (or fond of it) may be overwhelmed, but consider for a moment what you have here.

How many of us dream of actually observing the creation and production of a favorite film?Jones provides just that -- even without interviews from Laughton or the principal performers (save Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish), we see the film of Davis Grubb's novel being imagined, created, and released as described by those who were there, including Davis Grubb.Where a director's commentary on a DVD is typically a trifle, providing some interesting notes and observations limited by the film's running time, this book is all about immersion -- you almost feel you are there, and you're invited to stay for awhile.Jones rarely intrudes upon the first person accounts of the participants, and when he does, it's usually to point out potential discrepancies between remembered versions of events.

The "loose" narrative of oral history, any oral history, fills in an amazing amount of detail by accident, rather than by authorial intent, and this book leaves one feeling completely satisfied (or for those withshorter attention spans on the subject, perhaps a bit full) on a subject that seemed lost -- that we're seeing this book in 2002, nearly two generations separated from the film's creation, shows us the result of determined and dedicated sleuthing.This book can't have been easy to write or compile.

As presented, the book doesn't read like a typical film history, but more like an eyewitness account, and of course, that's what it is.If only more film books like this existed -- the greatest accomplishment of this book is not that you can walk away with facts -- it's that you can walk away feeling not only like you were there, but that you actually knew the participants, and could see where the social fabric between the personalities grew taut and relaxed at key points in the narrative.

Hats off to Jones -- a fine job, and one would hope, as novel in its execution as the film it describes, that will hopefully inspire imitation.Fans of the film are decidedly in your debt.

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Product Description:
Winner of the Rondo Hatton Award for "Book of the Year" (2002) from the Classic Horror Film Board, in "Heaven & Hell to Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter," author Preston Neal Jones tells us how the unique film "The Night of the Hunter" came to be, from its beginnings in the pages of Davis Grubb's novel to the acquisition of film rights by producer Paul Gregory, the hiring of Charles Laughton to direct and James Agee to write the script, to every aspect of the film's development and production--casting, designing, shooting, scoring and editing--to the profound disappointment upon its release. Recently re-released, "The Night of the Hunter," the only film directed by the late actor Charles Laughton, has now joined the select ranks of pictures chosen for inclusion in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress and is counted among the American Film Institute's "100 Greatest Thrillers." As the late Pauline Kael pointed out in writing of "The Night of the Hunter," "...truly frightening movies have a way of becoming classics of a kind."

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