ABSTRACT SOUND PIECE PROPOSAL

This scene is excerpted from “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), a thriller directed by Charles Laughton and starring Robert Mitchum as a murderer masquerading as a priest in order to get in the favor of unsuspecting widows across the Northeast.

My favorite film, “The Night of the Hunter” is an unapologetically excessive thriller that combines film noir, German Expressionism and the style of early innovators such as D.W. Griffith and Eric von Stoheim, and the result is a nightmarish fairy tale with provocative biblical implications. I selected this clip because it sufficiently distills the film’s primary themes and haunting imagery. The scene is inspiring in the manner in which Laughton builds suspense as Mitchum roams slowly around the foreboding bedroom with his razor blade, a feeling that I would like to evoke in my piece. It is an exceptionally chilling sequence that invokes a darker sort of inspiration in its edginess and cultivation of slow-burning tension. The very expressive use of light in the shot , especially the triangular light formation flanking Mitchum, the light refracted through the windows and the neat framing of co-star Shelley Winters’ face, is very inspiring, especially the sharpness and direction of the lines on the wall, a hallmark of German Expressionism.

Ideally, my piece would do justice to the tension that Laughton creates on screen. While I believe the score is perfect, as it changes pace nicely to accommodate jarring shots such as that of Winters lying angelically on her pillow and Mitchum reaching in an exaggerated manner towards the heavens, I would like to watch it with a thoroughly terrifying score that embodies the overall mood of the picture. My piece would be very dark, but the degree of darkness would constantly be adapting to the narrative, just as the original score does, though the tension in my piece would never let up. I want to give the listener a sense of profound fear, the type that I felt upon watching “The Night of the Hunter” for the first time when I was not yet even a teenager.

Because I have chosen a narrative scene upon which to be base my piece, I will have to adhere to the changes in mood and tone throughout the scene. In keeping with that adherence to narrative flow, I would start with a sharp hum that serves to make the listener slightly uncomfortable. The piece would then gain momentum at the 25-second mark, when Mitchum arises and begins to walk around the room. As he reaches towards the heavens, the piece would amble more than sprint, calming for a 15-second period in appreciation of the beauty of Mitchum’s gesture. When he shuts the window blind, however, the piece will ascend towards its violent climax, with the screeching and underlying thumping and blaring incurring within the listener a sense of terror as he leans over Winters, prepared to strike. When the scene changes to show the children, the music would again calm for a 30-second window, though it still remains very unnerving.

Relevant Sounds:
- Screeching (nails on chalkboard)
- Blaring (toned-down, resembling a locomotive from hell)
- Thunder (an exaggeration of the weather)
- Whispering (to exacerbate the idea of Mitchum’s psychosis)