The Night of The Hunter

(Charles Laughton, 1955)
IMDB

The terrifying Robert Mitcham, a real life bad boy, plays the leading role of a preacher, complete with love and hate knuckle tattoos. Laughton experiments with a lot of different shots, including aerial/ above shots and even a with camera attached to the front of a car.

Mitcham appears terrifying and looming, a black figure at the end of the garden in the shadow of a single street lamp, accompanied by the booming, great music each time he appears. He speaks with musicality and authority, casting a shadow over any other characters within his scenes.

In the attic room scene, there's a single bedside lamp that provides little light. The light from the single window casts across the set and the mother lies in bed, within the white light. The preacher casts a looming shadow over her and the room plunges into darkness as he stabs her. Later her body sits upright in a white car at the bottom of the river. Her hair blows with the current of the water, in synchronisation with the underwater reeds.

The preacher later appears haunting as a silhouette on the hill at dusk, chasing the children from their homes. And the children appear drifting downstream in a rowing boat, silhouetted against the the dark riverbank.