The Night of the Hunter (1955)

USA Director Charles Laughton Runtime 93 minutes Blu-ray USA, 2014 Distributed by The Criterion Collection (region A/1)

Night of the hunter: using cameras to quantify nocturnal activity in desert spiders

Invertebrates dominate the animal world in terms of abundance, diversity and biomass, and play critical roles in maintaining ecosystem function. Despite their obvious importance, disproportionate research attention remains focused on vertebrates, with knowledge and understanding of invertebrate ecology still lacking. Due to their inherent advantages, usage of camera traps in ecology has risen dramatically over the last three decades, especially for research on mammals. However, few studies have used cameras to reliably detect fauna such as invertebrates or used cameras to examine specific aspects of invertebrate ecology. Previous research investigating the interaction between wolf spiders (Lycosidae: Lycosa spp.) and the lesser hairy-footed dunnart (Sminthopsis youngsoni) found that camera traps provide a viable method for examining temporal activity patterns and interactions between these species. Here, we re-examine lycosid activity to determine whether these patterns vary with different environmental conditions, specifically between burned and unburned habitats and the crests and bases of sand dunes, and whether cameras are able to detect other invertebrate fauna. Twenty-four cameras were deployed over a 3-month period in an arid region in central Australia, capturing 2,356 confirmed images of seven invertebrate taxa, including 155 time-lapse images of lycosids. Overall, there was no clear difference in temporal activity with respect to dune position or fire history, but twice as many lycosids were detected in unburned compared to burned areas. Despite some limitations, camera traps appear to have considerable utility as a tool for determining the diel activity patterns and habitat use of larger arthropods such as wolf spiders, and we recommend greater uptake in their usage in future.

BANISHED FROM PARADISE. GENESIS MOTIFS IN THREE COMING-OF-AGE FILMS: THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (CHARLES LAUGHTON, 1955), MOONFLEET (FRITZ LANG, 1955) AND EL ESPÍRITU DE LA COLMENA (VÍCTOR ERICE, 1973)

This essay proposes a new approach to three fi lms, The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), Moonfleet (Fritz Lang, 1955) and El espíritu de la colmena (Víctor Erice, 1973), by comparing and analysing structural and audiovisual elements that refer to the Fall of Man and Expulsion from Paradise Myth as a coming-of-age tale.

Agee, James (1909–1955)

James Agee was an American film critic, journalist, and novelist, who, like his modernist contemporaries, pushed against the constraints of his genres. Born in Knoxville in 1909, Agee attended Harvard University before working as a journalist for Fortune, TIME, and The Nation. In 1936 he and photographer Walker Evans spent time among Alabama sharecroppers with the intention of writing a journalistic story about their plight during the Depression. The essay and photographs that they produced were rejected by their editors but were later incorporated into their book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). Although the book sold poorly, it would become a modern classic and a groundbreaking work of literary journalism. During the 1940s Agee served as a film critic, and his intellectual film reviews elevated the medium from marketing device to literature. He lauded the work of Alfred Hitchcock, revived interest in silent film comedians, and hailed cinema as the preeminent art form of the 20th century. Eventually, he worked in film production himself, co-writing scripts for The African Queen (1951) and The Night of the Hunter (1955), before dying of a heart attack at the age of 45 years. Two years later, his semi-autographical novel A Death in the Family was published and then won the Pulitzer Prize, securing his place in the canon of American writing.

Sunset with Chainsaw

Looking back at three films (The Night of the Hunter, House, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), this essay proposes a new way to read horror politically, moving away from allegories of “horrible content” in favor of an attention to the horrors of form and how “secondary” background details assert themselves.