La main du diable

Gloomy and atmospheric French variation on "Faust" and "The Monkey's Paw", brought to a higher level thanks to the stylish direction of Maurice Tourneur. If that surname rings a bell, you are probably familiar with the work of his more famous - and even more talented - son, Jacques Tourneur. When Tourneur Sr. Released "La Main Du Diable", his son Jacques already directed some of the best horror movies in history, like "Cat People" and "I Walked with a Zombie". Nevertheless, Maurice is a respectable craftsman as well, as made abundantly clear by this effort.

Desperate and unsuccessful painter Roland Brissot buys an extremely cheap talisman - a sealed box - from a sneaky Italian restaurant owner, hoping it'll bring him luck and the love of the beautiful Irene who brutally rejected him. Miraculously, Brissot's left hand (although he's right-handed) suddenly paints the most astounding artworks. Under the pseudonym of Maximus Léo, he becomes an acclaimed artist with Irene by his side as the worshiping wife. Life is like a dream for exactly one year, and then a mysterious little old man in black shows up ...

What I mainly like about "La Main du Diable" is how it resembles those brilliant expressionist horror classics from Germany during the early 1920s. Particularly the narrative structure and the dazzling climax seem to come straight out of his wondrous period. The most powerful (and uncanny) moments from the film come near the end, when Brissot confronts 7 men with terrifying masks at a diner table. They all turn out to be previous "owners" of the talisman, and share their stories. The moral is always the same: be careful what you wish for, and greed will bring any man down.

One-handed Pierre Fresnay comes to a second-rate inn on the Franco-Italian border. The guests are suspicious as he tells the story of how he bought a hand from the Devil, a hand that turned him into the greatest painter of the age. He bought it cheap, but he had to sell it to someone else before the Devil came for his soul, and for every day that passed, the price would double. By the time he looked up from his triumphs, who could buy this hand that would turn its bearer into the greatest in his chosen field?

Maurice Turneur had been directing for 30 years by this point, and his silent work was filled with glorious, painterly images. Here he is working in black and white, but his monochrome images are startling in their limning, and the story and performances peerless.

Painter Pierre Fresnay (Brissot) arrives at a secluded mountainside hotel that has been cut off by an avalanche. He carries a box with him and has a rather unpleasant attitude which alienates him from the other guests there. The police may or may not be on his tail as they arrive to ask about a man they have been chasing. When his box is stolen by supernatural forces, he decides it is best to come clean and tell his tale. We are then thrown into a flashback story that explains his life and how he came to have this box, and what its significance is as well as what is inside. It's a story of selling your soul to the devil and things come to an end at this mountainside hotel.

It's a good film that keeps you gripped. Fresnay is thoroughly dislikable at the beginning of the film but due to his predicament he wins you over and you understand why he is this way. A small man in a bowler hat, Palau, seems to follow him around. His appearances keep the tension going as he can change fortune but not necessarily in a good way. Fresnay has this box that gives him instant success, wealth, love, etc but it comes at a cost. His love interest is Josseline Gael (Irene) who is pretty straight-talking and whose behaviour also seems influenced by whether or not Fresnay has the box. Her real life story is interesting as she was married to a member of the French Gestapo and was jailed the following year to this film being made. She was subsequently stripped of her French citizenship whilst her husband was executed by a firing squad in 1946.

An annoyance at the beginning of the film is that everyone speaks too quickly so that you just about have time to read the subtitles let alone look at the picture of the actor's faces speaking the lines at the same time. It can be frustrating. You need to accustom yourself to this and then things get OK. The plot's theme is interesting and there are good sequences including a line-up of masked men, all previous owners of the box, who have a brief tale to tell. Fresnay's ability comes from painting with his left hand and he signs his name as Maximus Leo. Is this name significant? Yes it is.

What would you do if your debt kept doubling everyday and the debtor required payback? Easy, go to the bank and get a loan. Not sure why Fresnay didn't do that. But, then again, the devil doesn't play fair, so would probably conjure up a bank shortfall on that day. Maybe the best thing is to just enjoy the success you've got while it lasts. Fresnay fights back.

How many movies feature a character who sells his soul to the devil?Since "Faust",a lot!From "la beauté du diable" (René Clair,1949) to "Rosemary's baby"(Polanski,1968),from "Angel Heart" (Alan Parker,1987)to "the devil's advocate"(1997) and "the seventh gate" (Polanski again,1999).And it's far from being over..

"La main du diable " is one of the best.Maurice Tourneur constantly creates strange atmospheres:first,in an isolated inn,where,during the dinner,the lights go out.Then the hero ,Roland (Pierre Fresnay) begins to tell his tale during a very long flashback:he was a poor artist whose paintings did not sell,and one day he bought a mysterious hand ,a talisman:it's an overnight triumph.But who is this little man,always harassing him?Did Roland gain the world and lose his soul?

To reveal more would be a spoiler:I want to point out a marvelous scene,one of the strongest of the fantastic cinema:he invokes all the former owners of the hand.They all appear together,masked,in front of a long table.They are a very long chain in space and in time:this innovative sequence might have influenced Mickael Powell and Eric Pressburger for "a matter of life and death"(stairway to heaven)(1946)

Like father,like son:Maurice's son Jacques (Jack) will be also a master of fear,as "cat people" (1942,avoid the remake!)testifies.

The tragic and ill-fated Gérard de Nerval left a small but highly regarded body of poetry but it was as a superlative storyteller that he was first perceived by his contemporaries. He had already published a much praised translation of Goethe's 'Faust' and his short story 'La Main enchantée' is a variation on the 'Faustian pact' theme. It has been adapted for film by Jean-Paul le Chanois. To say it is a 'loose' adaptation is an understatement and le Chanois has interpolated snippets from popular Breton tales told to him by his grandmother.

This is undeniably the best of the five films made by Maurice Tourneur under the aegis of Continental Films, created by Herr Goebbels to distract the French public from the minor annoyance of the Occupation. From the very earliest Monsieur Tourneur's films were noted for their pictorial qualities and he employed his astonishing visual sense most effectively in themes of mystery and fantasy. The air of menace that pervades this piece is due to the Expressionist lighting. His cinematographer here is the legendary Armand Thirard whilst the editing by Christian Gaudin (strangely uncredited) maintains the tension. The sets are by Andrej Andrejew, one of the finest scenic designers of German Expressionism. By all accounts, due to the indisposition of the director, it was the assistant director Jean Devaivre, who was responsible for the wonderfully imagined sequence that gave the film its alternative title of 'Carnival of Sinners'.

This film has been seen by some as an allegory of the pact made between Hitler and Pétain and the Devil here, as played by the diminuitive, bowler-hatted Pierre Palau, is a thoroughly prosaic and unpleasant personage who might easily pass as an official of the Vichy regime. This of course is open to interpretation.

The cast is headed by Pierre Fresnay who was to shine the same year in Clouzot's masterpiece 'Le Corbeau', a thinly disguised allegory that got its director into all sorts of trouble. Fresnay is joined again by Noel Roquefort and Pierre Larquey. A small and uncredited role is played by the excellent Louis Salou, moving up the ranks and just three years before his signature role as Comte de Montray in 'Les Enfants du Paradis'. Fresnay's feverish and intense performance as the doomed painter frantically trying to save his soul is magnetic, even by his standards and it is to be regretted that this brilliant artiste, despite being a decorated hero in the previous war, was never able to shake off the stigma of alleged but never proven collaboration. His leading lady in this is Josseline Gael who was to pay a far higher price for her ill-advised horizontal collaboration with a member of the French Gestapo whilst still legally married to actor Jules Berry.

Maurice Tourneur died in 1961, having been forced to retire from filming in 1949 following the loss of a limb in a motor accident. In a career spanning thirty-six years his output is bound to have been variable but he remains one of Cinema's great visual stylists. His son Jacques, in his films for RKO in the 1940's, proved a worthy successor.