‘The Night of the Hunter’: the one movie that Cillian Murphy calls “a masterpiece”
Whilst the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis and Benedict Cumberbatch consistently take the plaudits as the greatest actors of contemporary cinema, too little thought is given to the less-decorated stars that consistently light up the silver screen. The likes of Nicholas Hoult, Sam Rockwell and Cillian Murphy don’t receive the appropriate credit they undoubtedly deserve, with the latter being one of the most underrated actors of the 21st century.
Having enjoyed collaborations with the likes of Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, Ken Loach, Wally Pfister, Wes Craven and Ben Wheatley over his 26 years in the film industry, Murphy has learnt from the very best in his rise to prominence. Though he shone in minor movie roles in the late 1990s, it was his first collaboration with Boyle for 28 Days Later that would truly spark his success.
Taking inspiration from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and John Wyndham’s 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids, Alex Garland’s terrifying story is a piece of seminal science fiction. Bottling the panic of the apocalyptic story with deft imagination whilst containing an excellent, isolated story of human desperation, fragility and violence, Garland’s story, directed by Boyle, is dependent on Murphy’s sensational lead performance.
It was his success with 28 Days Later that prompted Christopher Nolan to cast Murphy as the villain in his superhero origin story Batman Begins. This would trigger the start of something special between the two creatives, which continued with the wild sci-fi flick Inception in 2010, the WWII epic Dunkirk in 2017 and the complex biopic about the creator of the atomic bomb in 2023s Oppenheimer.
Thanks to these aforementioned roles, Cillian Murphy has become a critical and cultural darling, with fans eager to consume his opinion regarding anything and everything art. Speaking to Rotten Tomatoes in 2016, the actor shared his greatest movie inspirations, naming five of his favourite films with the publication, whereby he named the 1955 movie The Night of the Hunter “a masterpiece”.
When discussing the Charles Laughton-directed thriller, Murphy called the film: “A masterpiece visually and in so many ways, but also a tragedy as Charles Laughton only directed this one film. Robert Mitchum is so rivetingly magnetic”.
Also included on Murphy’s top five list is the Martin Scorsese classic Mean Streets from 1973, starring Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, which the actor praises for its “extraordinary energy”. In addition, he also picks the 1995 film La Haine with Vincent Cassel and Saïd Taghmaoui, stating: “Still relevant, still shocking. Stunning performances and direction. A film I revisit very often. Vincent Cassel is a bit of a hero”.
Whilst Murphy picks The Night of the Hunter as a particular favourite, filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie also hold a particular love for the film. Speaking about their favourite horror moments in cinema, Benny describes that film as: “not necessarily a scary movie, but there are moments where I am genuinely petrified”. Continuing, he explains, “when they’re on that river, and there’s the singing, and there’s that music, and there are close-ups of those animals, I’m frightened, but I don’t know why”.
