The Devil’s Hand (1943) – Film Review

Director: Maurice Tourneur
Cast: Pierre Fresnay, Josseline Gaël, Noël Roquevert
Certificate: PG

By Sarah Morgan

Creativity doesn’t go to sleep during wartime. Instead, it waits in the darkness for a moment to flourish.

During the Second World War in Britain, many movies were made, often flag-waving propaganda vehicles designed to keep up the nation’s spirits. Once the USA joined the fight, a similar thing occurred over there too.

In Nazi Germany, leading Third Reich member Joseph Goebbels recognised early on how the media could deliver Adolf Hitler’s message to the people, inspiring as well as educating them. He became his nation’s Minister of Propaganda, eventually re-opening occupied France’s film studios too, allowing them to make movies, providing they stuck to certain rules.

Of course, nothing that might be construed as criticising the Nazi party could be depicted on screen, but if The Devil’s Hand, produced in 1943, is anything to go by, such strictures encouraged even greater invention.

“Atmospheric twist”

The Devil’s Hand is a chilling, atmospheric twist on the classic Faust and The Monkey’s Paw tales, with Pierre Fresnay as Roland Brissot, who arrives at an isolated mountain inn after it has been cut off from the outside world by an avalanche.

He has only one hand, and tells the inn’s suspicious customers and staff how he came to lose the other one, revealing he was once a struggling artist who gained success and the love of a beautiful woman after becoming the custodian of a hand-shaped talisman.

However, on learning that if he didn’t sell the talisman at a great loss before his death he would spend eternity in hell, Roland set about trying to offload it, resulting in the unravelling of his once perfect life.

The film was directed with great style and panache by Maurice Tourneur, who had worked in Hollywood before returning to France after falling out with his bosses at MGM. His son, Jacques, later became one of the cinema world’s great stylists, directing such classics as Cat People, Out of the Past and Night of the Demon. Clearly he was a chip off the old block.

“Poetic and expressionistic”

Fresnay is suitably haunted as Roland; incidentally, he spent time in Huddersfield in 1927 appearing in the play Game As He Played It at the Theatre Royal, part of producer/director Marion Fawcett’s International Masterpieces Season.

Cinematographer Armand Thirard deserves a special note too for his poetic and expressionistic imagery. He would later find greater acclaim for his work on The Wages of Fear and Diabolique.

Thanks to a restoration carried out by the Gaumont Film Company, The Devil’s Hand looks better than ever and is arguably the best movie made during a very difficult period – prepare for shivers down the spine while watching.

Sarah Morgan( Writer )

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

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