Introduced by film critic Peter Rainer, followed by a book signing in the Moving Image Store

Dir. Charles Laughton. 1955, 93 mins. 35mm. With Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish. Acting legend Laughton’s sole screen directorial credit is perhaps cinema’s most remarkable one-off. Creepy preacher Harry Powell (a never-more-menacing Mitchum) offers naive widow Willa Harper (Winters) a fresh start, but her kids rightly worry his intentions are less than pure. Part horror film, part fairy tale, The Night of the Hunter is an idiosyncratic, dazzlingly shot cinematic wonder that feels like nothing else. Film critic Peter Rainer, who has had an illustrious 30-year career as film critic for publications including New York magazine and The Christian Science Monitor, will introduce the film, which he writes about in his new book Rainer on Film: Thirty Years of Writing About Film in a Turbulent and Transformative Era (Santa Monica Press, 2013).

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