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Rating:
On the right: Love - Amore.
On the left: Hate - Odio.
"I have them tattooed on my knuckles so that my followers immediately understand who they are dealing with. Hate attacks love, tries to put it down and destroy it, but the right hand is the right hand, the hand of good, it recovers and defeats hate. That's how it's always gone, and that's how it will always go. Love will conquer all evil.
I am a preacher, and I know my trade well; when they don’t arrest me, it’s harder for me to restrain myself. All those women, all those sinners, I can't let them be, I can't leave them alive, I can't ignore all those widows and their wealthy inheritances. They will arrest me again, love will win again, I’ll be in the clink for a while, but then I’ll come out more determined than before. Money, blood, and sermons. This is what I want, this is what I know how to do.
Stupid children, tell me where the treasure is... Your father stole it I know, everyone knows, but only you know where it is. So? It's in the lake, right? Yes, in the lake, the lake is deep, it's a great hiding place, if I don’t find the treasure, I’ll hide your mother there. By the way, she's dead. I killed her, hate tries to put love down remember? It always tries, hate doesn’t learn. I don’t learn. Where's the treasure? In the doll? How foolish of me not to have thought of it before! Give it to me! Now!
Come back here! Come back here! You can't be foolish enough to think you can escape me. Along that river then. There's no one, no one can help you. In this rural world, in black and white, you will be mine before dawn. Sail on that little boat on that river with your treasure clutched in your arms. You are just children and I am death, death on horseback. You will be mine. You will be dead. And the treasure will be mine.
What the hell? Who is that woman?
Damn you, you can't do this to me, you can't! They were alone. They were mine! No! It’s always like this. Love always wins. Hate loses and doesn’t learn.
I don’t learn"
A Dark Film.
Noir of 1955 in black and white, the only (unfortunately) direction by Charles Laughton, the film is a triumph of light cuts, enough to ridicule "The Man Who Wasn’t There" by the Coen brothers (and excuse me if that's not enough). The Preacher/Gold Digger, played by Robert Mitchum, is one of the blackest villains Hollywood has ever conceived, as cunning as he is ruthless, managing to be called father by the girl he himself makes an orphan. The personification of guilt will be defeated by those who have none yet.
A film that couldn’t be successful in 1955: too sacrilegious, raw, desperate. But today, it deserves its fame as a Masterpiece, deserving to be rediscovered by anyone claiming to love cinema, and deserving to be rewatched by those who have only vague memories of it.
It’s a pity its poor success. Laughton would never sit behind a camera again, only acting in front of one ("Spartakus" and "Witness for the Prosecution" just to name a few), leaving today’s viewer aware that, had it been made fifteen years later, the film would have been a cult, and the director a sacred monster of the Californian dream factory.
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