The Devil and Daniel Webster

William Dieterle
1941

This moral fairy-tale dressed up in Americana has a very unusual look and feel for a Hollywood picture of the time with expressionistic high contrast lighting, lack of big name actors (save Walter Huston of course), and frank sexual suggestion. Farmer Jabez Stone's got it pretty rough with a hard workaday life and meager returns to show for it, until a 7 year pact with Mr. Scratch (character actor par excellence Walter Huston as great Satan himself) lands the poor schlub in riches up to his armpits. The pot of Hessian gold inevitably leads to Jabez's moral decline as he begins to heartlessly enslave his neighbors through difficult loans, and neglects his simple wife for the carnal raptures of Hell's angel Simone Simon. When Mr. Scratch comes to collect his due, eminent politician of the people Daniel Webster steps up in defense of the wayward farmer to take on the Devil and his jury of the damned in a trial for Jabez's soul. There's a marked contrast between the fanciful and alluring depiction of evil as expressed through Scratch and Simon, and the ugly real-life cruelty and selfishness of Jabez. Scratch makes ironic jokes with a cheshire grin, plays frenzied music, and scarfs stolen pies with abandon, while Simon's Belle lustily competes for the affections of her man - theirs is the world of the naughty child, in which it's more fun to be bad than good. Jabez, on the other hand expresses the cold reality of selfish indulgence through the woes of his neighbors and the mounting emotional abuse directed towards his wife. Daniel Webster provides an interesting character as a drink-loving orator, equally at home with Washington fatcats, rural sharecroppers, and the Devil himself. Indeed, one of the most interesting scenes happens early on as a harried Daniel fights off the advances of Scratch deep into the night. It's an excellent picture, and a great example of how aesthetically and thematically unique RKO films could be in the 40's.