Dir. Maurice Tourneur, France, 1943, 80 mins, subtitled
Cast: Pierre Fresnay, Palau, Josseline Gael, Noel Roquevert, Guillaume de Sax
Review by Colin Dibben
The hungry guests are bickering over dinner at a snowbound Alpine hotel. There is a knock on the door. Enter once-famous artist Roland (Fresnay), with a package under his arm. He says he is being chased by some … Thing. The lights go out and there is a scuffle in the dark. When the lights come back on, Roland’s package is gone. Before he trudges back into the blizzard for a final struggle with the Thing, Roland tells a weird tale of his pact with dark forces.
The framing story is wonderful, dark and comic at the same time. The main Faustian story is sumptuously done but drags a bit – largely because of extended dialogue between Roland and his dark overcoated, little bowler-hatted nemesis (Paulu) and between Roland and his love interest, Irene (Gael). It is also hard to believe that Roland’s dreary dark Romantic fantasy paintings would have been a hit in Paris during any part of the 20th Century.
To make up for all that there are lots of atmospheric shots and a couple of interesting narrative curveballs.
It is the extras here that take the film to a new level. The Devil’s Hand was made during the Nazi occupation of France. You can look for elements of propaganda if you wish, but several veterans of the French cinema industry point out in the extras that, with cinema, the Nazis wanted to placate the French population, rather than win them over to their cause. They tell the nuanced story of politicking in the Nazi-overseen film industry – which surreptitiously employed Jews, some of whom are named in the film’s credits – as well as describing what it was like to go to the cinema and watch French and German films in those conflicted times.
Having said that, it remains exceptionally strange that a Nazi-approved film should be about one man’s pact with dark forces and their eventual defeat by (plot spoiler!) angels. The Nazis were dark forces, right? What were they thinking, allowing this story about the defeat of dark forces? Even if the devil here runs an outrageous debt economy that could be seen as an antisemitic trope. Perhaps, at some important level, the Nazis did not think that they were dark forces? Perhaps the Faust story is an example of ‘free ideological elements’ that any side can hoover up and use? But it does seem to include a rather fatal, destructive notion.
I noticed at least one other fantasy story element that was a common propaganda motif of the time, on all sides. Roland’s appeal for help to the ‘tradition’ of lost souls who have previously handled the hand reminded me of a similar element in the occult fiction of Dennis Wheatley, who worked on Allied propaganda during the same period. It is interesting that some of the most striking imagery in the film relates to these lost souls.
Director Maurice Tourneur, father of Hollywood’s more famous Jacques (Cat People, Out of the Past, Night of the Demon) had a long career stretching back into silent cinema. Here he uses long, twisted expressive shadows and bright light to great, almost surreal effect.
The Devil’s Hand is out on Blu-ray from Eureka! on 16 March 2026.
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