vital-graph: the devil and daniel webster

this is part of an ongoing series in which i discuss the films that matter most to me. the only criterion they share is that i find them indispensable, my desert island selections. some are established classics, some are definitely not, some occupy the grey space in between...

this one was tailor-made for me, what with its marriage of early americana, mephistophelean folklore and a lineage going back to german expressionist cinema. that whiff of brimstone you detect is william dieterle's magnificent the devil and daniel webster (1941).

dieterle's adaptation of a stephen vincent benét - who also collaborated on the screenplay - short story tells the story of jabez stone and the faustian bargain that threatens to be his undoing. he is a farmer in cross corners, new hampshire, struggling to keep his head above water. the farm he runs with the help of his wife, mary, and his mother yields just enough to keep them hungry and one instance of bad luck begets another. pushed to his breaking point, he frustratedly exclaims that he would sell his soul for two cents. hey, jabez, check your pocket.

interesting note: these actually appear to be canadian cents, unusable in new hampshire. i don't know if that was a clever bit on dieterle's part to suggest the futility of the bargain about to be struck or if they just found the coins aesthetically pleasing. intentional or not, a nice bit of subtext. at any rate, you go around making statements like that and it's not long before someone comes knocking to get that signature on the dotted line. walter huston is scratch, a role every bit as compelling and career-defining as howard in the treasure of the sierra madre (1948), and he appears amidst a haze of sulfurous smoke to make a deal. he offers jabez seven years of good luck and prosperity - money and all that money can buy - in exchange for his soul. with a prick of the finger, it is done and jabez's corruption is underway. he sets himself up as moneylender to the other downtrodden farmers in the region, eventually charging usurious rates. scratch installs a handmaiden in the stone household as a hedge against the righteous influence of mary and ma and jabez's downfall is all but guaranteed. mary, knowing her husband better than he knows himself, appeals to the famed orator, and godfather to their son, daniel webster for help putting jabez back on the right track. webster eventually ends up wrangling a trial for jabez's soul and argues in front of a jury of the damned for a reprieve for jabez, his own soul now at risk at part of the bargain. his legendary oratorical skills win the day and the devil is left to make due taking the hindmost, though the size of scratch's black book suggests he has no shortage of business and the final frames indicate that you and i might very well find our names on those pages.

this belongs to a school of rough-hewn americana that i hold near and dear to my heart, shouldering its way in between the supernatural pastorals of washington irving and the square-shouldered vigor and optimism of carl sandburg. it takes the highminded desires for infinite knowledge and worldly pleasures of its german antecedent, the scholar faust, and recasts them in a way that americans of every generation can relate to, from its philosophy to its landscape. from the restored opening shot of scratch walking up the road, consulting his book, we are never far from a waving wheat field, its breadth suggestive of expansion and growth, its fecundity suggestive - once in a beautiful dissolve to pregnant mary - of the generations to come whose security depends on the administration of the land, both agricultural and ideological. ma represents the indomitable spirit without which america could not have come to be. as jabez whines about his misfortune, she reminds him "as for what you're calling hard luck? well, we made new england out of it. that and codfish." her hands are never idle, the devil's playthings they are not. she is a constant source of strength and industry. jabez is, of course, weak. the devil doesn't pick fights he can't typically win. jabez is the hindmost in this group, to be sure, but even as corruptible as he is, he represents a particularly rural, american strand of corruptibility when compared to faust. in an early episode in which he talks about the sanctity of a simple seed, it is clear that his desires are rooted in the soil, in labor, not in metaphysical or academic pursuits. mary occupies the pragmatic and loving middle ground between the two. with her love of family and stoic willingness to do what needs to be done, she is the embodiment of the most basic american virtues. all that said, it's not as patriotic as it might seem on the surface.

the savior of the piece, daniel webster, while portrayed as a magnificent orator and friend to every farmer, is obviously not without his flaws. on more than one occasion we are made aware of his fondness for strong drink, which he refers to at one point as "the breath of the promised land". in fact, before the climax, in an illuminating bit of dialogue he tells us that he has "never left a jug or a case half finished" in his life. in this one sentence he makes clear that his love of alcohol and justice are on pretty even footing. you get the notion from this and a previous episode where scratch slips him a tankard at a town gathering that the door to his temptation is far from shut tight. this is the great hope of the republic? this man, drowsing in the town square, adrift in drunken reverie while jabez is forced to speak on his behalf, is the next president? hardly a paragon of virtue, it would seem. america's more sordid episodes are not forgotten either. when accused of being a foreign prince, scratch takes umbrage with webster's assessment and chides him, reminding him that "when the first wrong was done to the first indian, i was there. when the first slaver put out for the congo, i stood on the deck. am i not still spoken of in every church in new england? it's true the north claims me for a southerner and the south for a northerner, but i'm neither. tell the truth, mr. webster - though i don't like to boast of it - my name is older in the country than yours."

ZING! he also does not hesitate to remind us that the jury of that damned that sits in judgment of jabez - a rogues gallery of historic murderers, thieves and, worst of all, traitors - are "americans all". to his credit, webster addresses them as such. his argument for jabez's redemption has no legal basis, it is strictly an appeal to emotion. he finds the last shred of humanity remaining in these men and simply asks them to remember themselves before they made the same mistake he did, and that it is "the eternal right of every man to raise his fist against his fate". it's a surprisingly secular argument, being that this was made in the forties and the property in question is someone's mortal soul, and that thread runs throughout the film. it's a morality tale, yes, but the conflict is never presented as the infernal versus the divine. the struggle is never that old world. what we have instead is a microcosm of a troubled young nation where self-determinism is the coin of the realm, where a man is free to make his way employing honesty and toil and where redemption can be found when we practice compassion and reason in equal measure. no matter how old or complicated our nation becomes, these are things we would do well to remember. someone should write this down.

as a piece of craftsmanship, the film is dazzling. originally released as all that money can buy during RKO's creative peak, it boasts an impressive roster of talent, both in front of and behind the camera. william dieterle brought the angular darkness of german expressionist cinema - where he once performed in f.w. murnau's faust (1926), coincidentally - and combined it seamlessly with a lushness gleaned from working in the hollywood system to strike the perfect tone for this surreal folk tale. shot after shot, dieterle lures us deeper into the story with well-placed key lights and judiciously used special effects until we find ourselves immersed in a haunted world of shadows, fire and smoke.

it really is something to behold. it's a shame that this came out just in the wake of orson welles' citizen kane (1941) because i think if it hadn't, it would receive the recognition it richly deserves for its undeniable skill and style. editor robert wise and vitagraph's favorite film composer bernard herrman both brought their immense talents to bear on this film immediately after kane and their work is here is easily on par with that, herrmann's perhaps even surpassing it. his attention to detail and dedication to finding the right sounds for this film resulted in his only academy award. for the demonic fiddle piece at the harvest dance, he recorded the same musician layering multiple takes of the tune on top of one another, each version more frantic and discordant than the last. it resulted in a piece that sounds like one impossibly skilled player, rather than the sound of a quartet that you would get from recording a group of musicians playing the lines together. in an inspired bit of innovation, for scratch's appearances he recorded the sound of humming telephone wires to be incorporated into the score. the sound design works brilliantly with the score, as well. the way in which things go deadly silent the moment jabez offer his soul up in frustration, the punctuative thunder strike when jabez signs his soul away, the muted, murky voices (more accurately, voice, as they seem to speak as one) emanating from the ghostly party attendees and the jury of the damned - all of it thoroughly, chillingly effective. everyone behind the camera seemed to be operating at the height of their powers. in front of the camera, they hit the jackpot as well.

this is especially true when it comes to scratch and his emissary, belle. huston plays scratch with such malevolent glee that you frequently find yourself nodding in agreement with him. you can't help it. as a raconteur, he is without equal, playing the world's oldest salesman as if he had been around that long himself. one raised eyebrow is worth a thousand words. there is but one false note in the whole performance and if it didn't occur at such a pivotal moment i might not have noticed it. when the jury turns to deliberate what scratch thought was a foregone conclusion, he exhibits surprise. disappointment? sure. indignation? i could understand that, but someone who has been dealing with human beings as long as he presumably has should have enough wisdom and experience to never be surprised by any single thing they do. it's a small quibble, though, easily overcome. in every other frame, he is perfect. the physical aspects of the performance are notable, as well. with every motion, he inches closer, insinuating himself, touching you, resulting in a rancid, queasy intimacy. it's a technique that simone simon excels at as well, though in her case you don't mind so much. from the first second belle appears on screen, she feels like she is slithering around under your skin. she is even more unnerving than scratch as she encroaches the same way on a helpless infant, singing it diabolical lullabies. she is utterly beguiling, easily slipping past the defenses of new england farmers and hollywood censors with equal aplomb.

it is the handling of the relationship between jabez and belle that is easily the most subversive element of the film. scratch's seduction is moral - the powerful argument that bad luck is simply unnecessary - but it is only half of the equation. belle's seduction is decidedly physical, sealing the deal. she is the instrument with which scratch makes certain that jabez's every desire is satisfied. but how to portray that in 1941? cleverly, that's how. on the evening of his son's birth, jabez finds himself chasing belle around the barn as fiddles careen out of control, asking "shall we...dance, belle?" that pause is not mine, by the way. it is delivered just that way and you could drive a haywagon through it. the doctor has barely cut the cord and here he is trying out his best pick up lines. as his degradation continues, he leaves his marital bed one evening to escape the crying of his newborn son and finds himself at what is presumably belle's bedroom door. at that instant, scratch pops in the window, "what's the matter, neighbor stone? your conscience bothering you? ha! we take care of that. give me your hand" and leads jabez directly into temptation. she replaces mary everywhere else in the stone household almost as quickly as the bedroom and people begin to talk. nothing is ever explicit, mind you, but if this movie was equipped with a neon sign it would read "HEY! YOUR PROTAGONIST IS HAVING REALLLLLY HOT ADULTEROUS SEX WITH A LITERAL DEMON WHILE HIS WIFE AND NEWBORN BABY SLEEP NOT THIRTY FEET AWAY!" but this was 1941. so it doesn't. instead, it is depicted so clearly but cleverly that joe breen and his blue-pencil pushers could only throw their hands up in frustration.

i love it for all these reasons and many others. it has charms that are appropriately duplicitous and incendiary, when you look past the first layer or two, and it's about damned time it got its due. do what you have to to see it. go to great lengths, if you must. after all, "what's a little pain to a lucky man?"

vital-graph: it's a gift

this is part of an ongoing series in which i discuss the films that matter most to me. the only criterion they share is that i find them indispensable, my desert island selections. some are established classics, some are definitely not, some occupy the grey space in between...

there is no single film comedian i find funnier than my favorite raconteur, roustabout and reprobate, w.c. fields and no film of his makes me laugh harder than it's a gift (1934).

this thing is fields' essence distilled (quite appropriate). as with most of his work, the plot is threadbare, only existing to provide a skeletal framework that houses a series of brilliant gags and fields' grandiloquence. in the film, fields plays harold bissonette (pronounced bis-on-ay), the henpecked, downtrodden owner of a grocery store in new jersey. his dream of owning an orange ranch in california looks like it will become a reality with the untimely passing of his uncle bean. against his family's wishes, he takes his inheritance and buys an orange grove, packs the family up and heads west to prosperity. the orange grove is a disaster, a veritable wasteland. it seems this will be the final crushing indignity in a life that has hardly been idyllic up until now. fortune smiles upon the great man in the eleventh hour, however, and what looked like the single worst real estate decision ever made results in an incredible, and unlikely, windfall. his dedication to his dream has seen him through and it's nothing but california sunshine from now on.

the story in this particular film is not so important in and of itself. it's more important as the best example of the story fields told us his entire career. no comedian i can think of, with the exception of richard pryor, put more of his personal pain into his art in a noble attempt to tell us something about ourselves than fields. his films provide a running commentary on the dour life of the everyman, beset on all sides by shrewish wives, annoying children, accursed salesmen, nosy neighbors, demonic customers and bungling assistants. his struggle for those little victories and rare moments of peace are something most people can identify with and we'll gladly take each small claim he can stake on our behalf, even if sometimes it is only the curse muttered under his breath. these themes would arise again and again in fields' work as he constantly worked and refined material, each time making the joke cut a little closer to the bone. significant portions of it's a gift, for instance, are recycled from the early silent effort, it's the old army game (1926). even more significantly, though, these episodes are recycled from fields' life. his estrangement from first wife hattie and the anxiety over the separation from his son and his wife's unsettling influence over the child loom like a spectre over practically his entire filmic output. fortunately for us, he could turn this misery into comedy gold. it's a gift wastes no time in establishing these themes for us. the opening scene introduces us to our hapless hero as he tries to navigate the minefield of morning rituals in his household. his daughter's vanity and lack of consideration for her father results in him laying on a chair attempting to shave in a spinning mirror he has suspended from the bathroom light. his son's stray roller skate almost results in a broken neck for him and his wife's incessant badgering makes for a breakfast that never gets eaten. he rushes to work but it provides no relief as he must juggle his incompetent employee, a belligerent customer who wants ten pounds of cumquats and the hurricane force that is mr. muckle, the deaf and blind man who destroys the store in pursuit of a five cent pack of chewing gum.

put it down, honey!

fields' ear for the language is one of my favorite things about the man and this segment is a sterling demonstration of his skill. mr. muckle and mrs. dunk, the terms of endearment he showers the blind man with in an effort to stave off the store's destruction, ten pounds of cumquats - all of it genius. cumquats, that's an easy one. that's obviously far and away the funniest fruit you can keep in stock. his genius is demonstrated, though, by his choice of the amount. ten is the funniest number he could have reasonably chosen. don't believe me? replace it and see. six pounds of cumquats! nine pounds of cumquats! doesn't have the same punch. ten simply sounds the funniest. as if the verbal dexterity wasn't enough, this scene also introduces us to elwood dunk, portrayed by baby leroy, who was a tiny thorn in fields' side on more than one occasion. referring to the child as "blood poison", fields tries and fails to conduct business as usual as the tyke, fields' assistant and a barrel of molasses conspire to finish the job mr. muckle started. the refuge of work no longer an option, our intrepid hero returns home.

and here we are treated to one of my favorite comic sequences ever put on film. a misunderstanding over a wrong number ends with fields being exiled to the porch to get what little sleep he can salvage from this long night (of which, it is clear, there are many). words don't do it justice. here is a section of it.

sweet repose. and this is only a portion of this brilliant set piece. he is also assailed by baby elwood dunk again, who manages to nearly choke him to death with grapes and drop an ice pick into his skull, by abby and mrs. dunk who shout their conversation all around him, by his wife who wants to know who the women were he was just talking to, by mrs. frobisher and her squeaky clothesline, by a vegetable and fruit vendor noisily hawking his wares and, finally, by a fly. it is a masterpiece of slow burn and building frustration. it brings tears to my eyes. and, again, it's the little things that make all the difference. as funny as the jokes are, i laugh the hardest at the almost inaudible groan fields emits as the insurance salesman mounts the stairs. his weariness and exasperation with his fellow man, and his willingness to give voice to it, to say things we are all thinking but that other comedians wouldn't dare say, are the basis for some brilliant comedy. and he takes a shot whenever he can. when the neighbors gather to see them off one of them asks his wife what their first stop is going to be but fields heads the question off with his answer, "won't stop until we get five hundred miles from here", making quite clear the esteem in which he holds these jabbering mooncalves.

i'm with you all the way, bill.

the family makes their way westward to eventually arrive at the ruined orange grove that he purchased, sight unseen, and his family, disgusted with this turn of events, abandons him. it seems that all is lost. forlorn and dejected, he sits amidst the rubble of his purchase to ponder his fate. at this pivotal moment, a neighboring rancher races up the drive to inform him that, in actuality, his plot is prime after all. it is an ideal location for the grandstand of a proposed race track that is going in on the adjoining lot. his new neighbor advises him that the racetrack owners are on their way to make him an offer and to hold out for any price because they will pay it. after some negotiation, the staggering sum on $44,000 is settled upon which allows our beleaguered family man to live out his dream after all, and all in his own inimitable fashion. the dreamer, after a lifetime of suffering the slings and arrows of family and fortune, has finally arrived at his own personal shangri-la and he did it with a dogged self-reliance and a curmudgeonly grace.

it's one of my absolute favorites, and so is he. ever the underdog, he always managed to snatch victory from the jaws of ignoble defeat in the last reel, exposing fools and needling termagants all along the way. convention and propriety be damned! groucho marx always told a story about fields sitting in the bushes in front of his house and shooting at curiosity seekers with a BB gun. "today, he'd probably be arrested". probably so. i'd bail him out. any man that will boot a small child square in the ass when he deserves it is alright in my book. i'll watch his movies anytime.

vital-graph: the old dark house

this is the inaugural entry in what will be an ongoing series where i want to discuss the films that matter most to me. the only criterion that they will share is that they are indispensable to me, my desert island selections. some are established classics, some are definitely not, some occupy the grey space in between...

no better time than halloween to roll out this first choice, the one film i have watched more than any other, james whale's the old dark house (1932).

in the midst of establishing their dominance in the realm of early american horror cinema, universal studios picked up the rights to j.b. priestley's 1927 novel benighted, published in the states a year later as the old dark house. it's a darkly comic book, rife with the class-consciousness that permeates so much of the greatest work, literary and otherwise, from the UK. it ends on a decidedly more downbeat note than the film and the disillusionment of the post-world war one generation is much more keenly felt throughout. it's a distinctly different experience from the film and i recommend it highly as well.

my battered and beloved paperback copy from 1945.

universal turned over the reins of production for this adaptation to james whale in the wake of his success with frankenstein (1931) and it was most certainly an inspired choice. he was at the peak of his powers in the early thirties and few, if any, were as adept as him at combining deep black humor with literate eccentricity and gothic atmosphere. the alchemy of this particular production was so potent that he essentially defined a genre, and not for the first time either.

the film begins with a trio of travelers navigating the welsh countryside in a downpour so vicious they would be better off with a boat rather than their touring car. it is a deluge approaching biblical proportions and tempers in the car are frayed. after narrowly escaping a landslide (a nice piece of miniature work), in the distance they spy the lights burning in the titular house. sensibly, they stop to ask for shelter. it's the last sensible thing that happens for the next seventy minutes.

they are greeted at the door by the mumbling and menacing morgan, played by boris karloff, who is so unrecognizable from his previous turn as frankenstein's monster that there is a message prior to the film assuring you, the viewer, that this is indeed the man you came to see. here he is the drunken, savage and mute butler. he bids/grunts them entry and there we are introduced to the skeletal horace femm, the urbane and timorous half of the sibling pair that maintains the household. "my sister was on the point of arranging these flowers", he says, as he throws them into the fire and if it wasn't obvious before it certainly is now - we are through the looking glass. the other half of the sibling pair, the rigid, zealous and somewhat deaf rebecca femm, bursts in shrilly soon thereafter. if you're paying attention you may notice that she intimates that there are no beds available for our weary travelers. after a quick change of clothes for mrs. waverton, dinner is served!

another pair of travelers arrive, the nouveau riche sir william porterhouse and his chorus girl companion, setting up our collision of class quite nicely. charles laughton, in this role, is almost the storm's equal in terms of bluster but is shut down quite handily by ernest thesiger's delivery of the most unexpectedly funny line of the film - "have a potato". the after dinner conversation begins to strain the civility of the assembled and provides the excuse for our shifting groups to explore the house and take up the lackluster romantic subplot. in the meantime, morgan is in the kitchen drinking himself into a violent stupor and stumbles back to the dining room with bad intentions only to be subdued. while he is sleeping it off, the secrets of the house slowly begin to reveal themselves. mr. and mrs. waverton discover the ancient, invalid patriarch of the femm family upstairs and are treated to another take on the femms' twisted family history. meanwhile, downstairs, the newly lovestruck penderel crosses paths with the black sheep of the family, saul, who, with his knife-throwing and pyromania, makes the rest of the femm clan look positively stable. saul's attempt to burn down the house is thwarted but not without casualties. amidst the wreckage of the house, an uneasy calm settles as day begins to dawn and the only thing that is sure is that no one is going to be the same after so much quality time with the femm family.

there are two reasons this film has lodged itself so firmly in my head and my heart. the first is the consummate skill with which it is executed. the production design is striking. the sets are a mass of nearly impossible angles, even the shadows have shadows. there is a wonderful segment where gloria stuart is playing at casting shadow puppets on the dining room wall which shockingly transform into one of our hosts. the expressionist touches even extend as far as ernest thesiger's nostrils.

the cast is top notch. the film is the american film debut of ernest thesiger, charles laughton and raymond massey and the entire ensemble is photographed beautifully in a series of carefully composed and ever-shifting groups that subtly highlight the cycle of peculiar relationships that evolve and devolve over the course of one long evening. the sound design is elegant and clever. there is only music over the credit sequences so the sound of the storm raging outside functions as the score, with thunder providing punctuation for some scenes and rising winds accompanying the more tumultuous sections. everyone involved, not just whale, were at the top of their game for this one.

the other reason it sticks with me is because this thing is so far ahead of its time. the class-consciousness that was central to priestley's novel is actually overridden by persistent questions of morality and sexuality throughout the film. the femm family lives in a house divided. on one side you have the blasphemous and flamboyant horace and wicked and worldly roderick, on the other you have the pious rebecca and the mad saul. it is a division that will eventually be reconciled only by fire and death. james whale's perverse sense of humor is on display with the casting of noted british stage actress elspeth (billed as "john") dudgeon as the family patriarch. you also have the luminous gloria stuart showing a fair amount of her lovely, alabaster skin for 1932.

the way the cast completely gives themselves over to the offbeat material also provides the film with its longevity. it's such a strange combination of suspense and odd comedy but they seem to wholly believe in it. they don't treat it like a B picture, that's certain. ernest thesiger thoroughly inhabits the character of horace femm. every line is fraught with multiple interpretations, at least two of them hilarious. every arched eyebrow is withering. of all the cast, though, brember wills' portrayal of saul is probably the most committed, the most pivotal. he's only onscreen for a few minutes but his transformation from victim to madman is staggering. he simply cannot hold the mask of sanity together and the way he lets the crazy progressively show through the cracks is riveting. i would be hard pressed to think of a better example of maniacal glee in cinema. in the middle of the fight with melvyn douglas he bites his throat (a scene that was edited out of the 1939 reissue). he is completely out of control and it is perfect. he'd definitely rather light a candle than curse your darkness.

and, even though it probably makes me crazier than saul on some level, i wish i could live in this movie. the thunder and the rain, the fire and the brawls, the old matrons and the chorus girls - i love it all. i love it because it's never obvious, it's meticulous but it never does the thing that is expected. i've seen it dozens of times. i will, most likely, see it dozens more before i am through and it will always surprise and delight me. it will always welcome me home.

get your hands on a copy when you can!