MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This paper’s title paraphrases a perceptive Imdb.com user’s rave review of Der Verlorne, which notes that its director, Peter Lorre, like Charles Laughton, was a legendary actor who had only this one chance to direct and, like Laughton, chose to make an extraordinary and memorable horror film noir. This paper will compare Lorre’s movie, produced in postwar Germany, with Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, made in America four years later, analytically emphasizing their striking similarities, especially when it comes to the innovative application of international noir stylistics, expressionistic horror elements, troubling subject matter, and alienated thematic attitudes that effectively evoke the anxieties of the postwar world in both Europe and America. Each movie combines cinematically beautiful manner with powerfully disturbing matter to create what James Naremore has labeled “blood poetry.” The paper’s analysis will be sure to include consideration of the careers of both actors, particularly in regards to their roles in many horror and noir films (e.g., Lorre in Mad Love, Stranger on the Third Floor, The Mask of Dimitrios, and many others; Laughton in Island of Lost Souls, The Big Clock, The Bribe, and many others) in this context as “preparation” for their single directorial efforts. Recent works that are primary sources include Stephen Youngkin’s The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre and Jeffrey Couchman’s The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film.