A few years ago I was attracted to the work of French filmmaker Maurice Tourneur, after reading his IMDb profile. I already knew that his film «La Main du Diable» had a cult following, and that he was the father of Jacques Tourneur, the famous director of «Cat People», «I Walked with a Zombie», and «Out of the Past», but I had no idea of his own prestige and importance in the history of cinema.
During the silent film period, Maurice Tourneur was as popular as David W. Griffith and Thomas Harper Ince, and his movies had a strong influence due to their visual design refinement. I am yet to see his version of James Fenimore Cooper's «Last of the Mohicans» (1920), selected to the National Film Registry by the US Congress, but I have already seen his adaptations of Maurice Maeterlinck's «The Blue Bird» (1918, also selected to the National Film Registry), and Joseph Conrad's «Victory» (1919).
I have just finished watching «La Main du Diable», a French production made during the last stage of his career, when he returned to France, tired of the commercialism of the Hollywood films. Connections are often made between Nazi occupation in France and certain films that are or seem to be allegories of this state of things, as Carné's «Les Visiteurs du Soir», or Clouzot's «Le Corbeau», so I would not be surprised if there are analysis linking «La Main du Diable» to Nazi presence in French territory.
If it's true that this reading is possible and plausible, that is fine, but the film is fascinating as it is, a moral tale with elements of fantasy and subtle horror: in an Alpine hotel, the boring confinement of a group of travelers trapped by an avalanche, brightens up with the sudden arrival of a nervous man, with a stump and a small box under his arm. After the box is stolen during a blackout, the travelers become a captive audience (as we, the spectators), listening to the man as he tell his story, from being a luckless painter, to buying a sinister talisman that brought him fame, love and fortune, and being cheated by the Devil.
The story of course is similar to other cinematic pacts with the Devil, as those made by Faust, the Prague student, Jabez Stone in «The Devil and Daniel Webster», the phantom of the Paradise theater, the investigator in «Angel Heart», or the young lawyer in «The Devil's Advocate», among others. But Tourneur, as Murnau in his «Faust», fascinates us with his visual reading of Gérard de Nerval's novel, and creates a glowing monochromatic world of oblique lines, shadows, masks, and an affable little Devil, played by a smiling old man who, behind the appearance of a helpless civil servant, hides his treacherous essence.
The film is a well-mounted clockwork that reaches its expected conclusion with the same punctuality the Devil demands of his creditors. If by chance it crosses your path, don't miss «La Main du Diable», a work that only asks for 78 minutes of your time.
