The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) DVD

The title says it all. Juxtapose the name of a true-life nineteenth-century orator, attorney and senator with the Biblical personification of evil, and you capture something of the strange mix in The Devil and Daniel Webster of social realism and moralising mythology – even if the 1941 film has also been known variously as Here Is A Man and All That Money Can Buy.

Adapted from an award-winning 1937 short story by Stephen Vincent Benét, this black-and-white parable is essentially Faust on a farm. Impoverished husbandman Jabez Stone (James Craig) enters a contract with the diabolical Mr Scratch (Edward Arnold) to surrender his soul in return for seven years of prosperity – but then, after fleecing his neighbours, leaving his good wife (Anne Shirley) for Scratch’s seductive associate Belle (Simone Simon), and abandoning every value he once held dear, Jabez has an eleventh-hour change of heart and turns to Daniel Webster to defend him before a jury of the damned.

Falling somewhere between The Phantom Carriage (1921), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) and Jigoku (1960), William Dieterle’s film uses a supernatural frame to stage culturally specific moral questions – in this case the clash of capitalism and equality, individualism and community, in the history and constitution of America.

Expressionist shadowplay, Bernard Herrmann’s eerie sonic manipulations, and some impressive visual effects, all contribute to the uncanny atmosphere, while Arnold and Simon make mesmerisingly charismatic corruptors – and there is also charm in the way the film dances around the Hays Code, especially in its oblique presentation of adultery.

Following the example recently set by Criterion, Eureka! have reinstated in this Masters of Cinema Series disc an additional 21 minutes of footage that RKO culled from the film after its original release.

Anton Bitel