WHY HAS NOBODY MENTIONED NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. I'm ashamed I didn't think of it until now.
This definitely belongs on this list, and not only for fitting the theme but for being on any grounds a really great movie. (The children are not fleeing the authorities, but I don't think that misses the criteria.)
Personal moviegoing digression: Family lore has it that either
The Night of the Hunter or else
Carmen Jones would have been the first movie I was taken along to, instead of being left home with a babysitter or family, at age four or five. This probably was on a visit with our NYC relatives, so there would have been extra adults to take care of me and my two-years-older cousine.
You might think exposure to these dark and complex narratives at such a tender age would have twisted my tastes, if nothing worse. But I must have imprinted on these in a favorable way, as I've long regarded them as neglected masterpieces. (Or maybe that shows I
was led astray?)
Happily,
Night of the Hunter has in the last 15 or20 years claimed its place, at first for Agee's script but then also for Laughton's direction. (Say, where else have we seen the L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E fist tattoos?)
Carmen Jones has had to overcome legitimate serious questions about racial attitudes. But I felt it was ripe for rehabilitation when Prof. Jackie Stewart (when she was still in grad school, this would have been) included it in a long and illuminating series on African-American films for Doc Films, and gave a very good introduction. But a more public/available testimony is provided by
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) (TV), and in Halle Berry's 2002 Oscar acceptance speech (for
Monsters' Ball, that is) — when she said it should not have taken this long for the Best Actress Oscar to go to an African-American woman, she meant that not on general principles but specifically with reference to Dandridge's performance as Carmen Jones.
==mitch
There's a cafe on the corner, run by my friend Billy Pastor [lillas Pastia!]
The kind of a place where a man takes a gal when he wants to move faster.
... Think I'll say hello to Pastor.