movie déjà vu
Robert Mitchum stars in The Night of the Hunter
Celebrating cinema's passionate obsession with itself, ACMI's 14-week cinema program Remembered by continues this week with the screening of The Night of the Hunter in a double bill with Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear.
Remembered by explores the play of remembrance - active recall, associative linkage - between our favourite films and the films they are remembered by. Each week, ACMI will present a double or triple bill that traces some of the great movie connections. The program spans over 70 years of cinema history and includes works from Australia, the USA, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Filmaker cinephiles (such as Jena Luc Goddard, Martin Scorsese, Joel and Ethan Coen) express their love of cinema through the filmmaking practice of channeling past references to their favourite films through their own movies. These references can be as oblique and subtle as a technical reconstruction of shots; the reconfiguration of a narrative, the echo of gestures, characters, performance or a musical refrain.
This week The Night of the Hunter will be screened in a double bill with Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear at 7.00pm from Thursday 17 to Sunday 20 April.
The Night of the Hunter will then continue to screen at ACMI over the Easter long weekend and holiday for limited exclusive re-release season running until Friday 25 April.
In the The Night of the Hunter Robert Mitchum plays the definitive psychopath, Rev. Harry Powell, in this chillingly grim fairytale about a phoney preacher looking for loot who stalks a widow Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) and then her two young children John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). The children eventually take refuge with a stoic old mother goose figure (Lillian Gish).
Legend has it that director Charles Laughton told Robert Mitchum 'this character I want you to play is a diabolical shit'. Mitchum responded: 'Present'. His famous delivery of 'the little story of right-hand/left-hand' and the love/hate tattoos on his knuckles have been widely referenced in such contemporary films as Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear and Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing and in Bruce Springstein's song 'Cautious Man'.
Full program details are available on the Remembrance website at www.acmi.net.au/remembrance
Published Friday, 11 April 2003
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