La main du diable

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.

I'm a sucker for Faustian stories, and this one is such a delight. It has an Expressionistic, visual flair to it with charming special effects, and I was impressed that it was made in 1943. It's not a leap to believe that Maurice Tourneur saw in this story a symbol of Vichy France.

The story has been told with so many variations over the years, some before this film but so many more afterwards that it may not feel all that fresh. In fact, it may feel a little like a (very good) 80 minute Twilight Zone episode. I liked how it zipped along with great pace, but managed to get in little bits of humor in along the way, i.e. The painter saying this about the airs he put on: "I cultivated my sloppiness, wore a new dirty shirt each day, carefully mussed my hair and spouted dazzling theories," or the crowd clamoring at the open bar at the gallery opening. I also liked the characterizations of the devil ('le petit homme,' Palau) and the struggling painter (interestingly also derided by his girlfriend as a 'little man,' Pierre Fresnay). Showing the history of the seductive power of the disembodied hand, with the recurring elements of never being satisfied and ultimate ruin, was also a wonderful, symbolic touch.

A well done, very imaginative story, variations of which have been done many times, but not with the style and touch of a Tourneur. Both father and son had made quality pictures enriching the lives of moviegoers for decades, and here is another. Jumping ahead a few years for a comparison, "Carnival Of Sinners" is like a feature-length 'Twilight Zone' TV show, but you would have to see this picture to appreciate how far superior it is.

Brissot(Pierre Fresnay) is a painter unsuccessful in most everything he attempts - until he buys a 'talisman', a hand in a box from someone glad to get rid of it. Of course, the hand is cursed. The film starts at the end as he is relating his tale to a group at a mountain resort, and from thereon the story is as gripping as it is bizarre, and there is no letup. I don't summarize movie plots in reviews (I leave that to all other contributors), but this picture is an edge-of-your-seat story throughout its 78 minutes, which fly by.

Very surprising to think that there are only 5 other reviews and only 394 ratings for such a terrific picture. Congratulations to TCM for dusting this one off. I am always delighted when I can see a great movie I hadn't seen before - and done with such style and competence. But with the Tourneur name on it I should have expected same.

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.

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.