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One of my all time favorites.

hyped garbage

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

A desperate man escapes into a crowded inn in the French Alps and tells the hungry guests his story which the movie reveals as an extended flashback to his days in Paris as a failing artist who seemingly sells his soul to the devil to gain a mysterious left hand (a talisman) from a chef who was only too eager to get rid of it. Once in possession of the hand, the woman he has courted, who had (appropriately) worked in a shop selling gloves, accepts his marriage proposal after previously cruelly rejecting him as a talentless loser. Told in a film full of expressionistic sets, the story captures so many significant and fascinating details in the settings and the various characters, everyone of whom plays parts that interweave remarkably well to make up what must be considered a real classic.

Down on his luck and trying to change it, a man acquires a cursed hand said to accomplish that and finds it to come true, only for the devilish owner of the hand to appear to him looking to collect on the final aspect of the deal.Overall, this was a very puzzling effort as there's some great stuff here and some really troubling stuff. The troubling stuff is off to a start right away, as the main gimmick of this is that it's supposed to be the lead recounting his story to the group in a remote mountain lodge, yet it takes a good while to start off the story-telling which really throws the pacing to this one all over the place. Rather than be introduced to everything quite quickly, the dragged-out pace early on makes the first half seem quite overlong as it sets up his new lifestyle change and the resulting situations that spring from that. After that, it gets a lot better when the Satanic angle finally gets played and that sets off a lot of good stuff, from being tormented by the ever-increasing amount needed to end it all to the string of luck that comes to an end through his meddling is all in good fun, and when that gets to the finale with the assembled owners in masks recounting their fates, it's when this one really gets going and delivers some fun. All in all, it's problematic but not too bad.Today's Rating/PG-13: Violence.

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 in Hollywood, 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» (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 Tourneur 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, as Carné's «Les visiteurs du soir» (1942), or Clouzot's «Le corbeau» (1943), so I would not be surprised if there is an essay linking «La main du diable» to Nazi presence in French territory. If it's true that this reading is possible, the film is fascinating if one takes it as it is, a moral tale with elements of fantasy and subtle horror: in an Alpine hotel, the dull confinement of a group of travelers that are 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 brings 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, 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 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.

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.