AVQ&A: What’s your favorite debut feature from an actor turned director?

It’s almost a cheat to pick Laughton because his first at-bat was also his last. One of the great thespians and screen actors of his time, who immortalized Quasimodo and won an Oscar for Henry VIII, Laughton only directed one film, 1955’s Night Of The Hunter, his sterling debut and swan song. But his decision to take his ball and go home, though, only added to the otherworldly mystique of the film. It makes sense that Laughton pulled career-great performances out of Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, and Lillian Gish, but Hunter’s visual language is equally impressive. Shot by the great Stanley Cortez, the film’s beautiful black-and-white photography conjures a liminal space between dreams and nightmares, where every shot is as unique and unsettling as the menacing Preacher Harry Powell (Mitchum), who terrorizes a widow (Winters) and her children with unflappable charisma and wicked sense of humor. Every moment of Hunter feels like a memory, both specific and fantastical, giving the movie an allure that can’t be replicated. It’s alchemy. That Laughton never picked up the camera again makes Hunter’s legacy all the more bittersweet. It’s as if Orson Welles never directed after Citizen Kane. What could’ve been, we’ll never know, but what’s left behind abides and endures. [Matt Schimkowitz]