moran-78845 I gave a ten minute presentation upon this movie and the original short story by Stephen Vincent Benet. I had an audience of roughly twenty people: faculty and students. Afterwards many of them came up to me to tell me how many they enjoyed the movie.Walter Huston, in the role of the Devil, chewed up the screen with his cigar smoking and his wicked smile. Old Lucifer has never been so much fun; and he's an American original in this film as Benet intended.Edward Arnold, a hail and hearty character era from the 30's and 40's, played a robust and earthy Daniel Webster, Senator from Massachusetts. His duel with the Evil One in a court room full of the damned from American history is priceless.An all-star cast does an outstanding to keep this film compelling and timeless.

funkyfry A severely down-on-his-luck New England farmer (Lindy Wade) strikes a deal with "Scratch" (Walter Huston as the devil) to bring himself 8 years of good fortune and finds himself without conscience and ultimately almost without wife as he slides down that proverbial "slippery slope." Luckily he has earlier on earned the good-will of a plutocratic lawyer/politician named Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold) who is willing to argue before the most diabolical American court ever assembled to save Daniel Stone's soul.Overall it's a mildly pleasing and mildly disturbing film, too worried about its faux-provincialism to truly become interesting or to really present a morally complex story. While Walter Huston is delightful as the manipulative Scratch, with a very physical performance, his work isn't really matched by Arnold and the work from Wade and the actress playing his wife (Anne Shirley) is so poor that it undermines the film. Not only are their performances hollow, without any real emotional urgency or immediacy, but the roles are poorly written so that you doubt any actor could have done much with it. The wife character is looks and talks like she stepped out of a D.W. Griffith movie from 1912 moreso than some rural 19th Century atmosphere. As if to correct or compensate for the weird rigidity of the wife they've given Stone a mother who is so broadly written and performed that she barely seems feminine by any definition. These are some terrible duo, no doubt, and if written in a more sarcastic way I would imagine they would suffice to explain Danny Stone's flight from the paths of the righteous.Although Simone Simon is creepily beautiful we still cannot understand his total abandonment of his wife and all decent behavior. Apparently it's a heck of a lot of fun to ride in a sleigh with Simone Simon. I don't want to be too hard on the movie -- there's a lot of fun thanks mostly to Simon and Huston. But the movie's moral dichotomy is so rigid, the line between good and evil so definite, that I literally felt it had nothing to do with the real world. And sadly, even with such a rigid separation between bad and good behavior the writers weren't able to give Daniel Webster a final speech that would really absolve Danny Stone of his guilt or that would make us believe he had convinced a jury of traitors that Stone should go free just because they might empathize with his desire for a second chance at life. Simply put, we could understand Stone's desire for a second chance if his original mistakes and evil deeds made any sense in and of themselves.Wish I could have enjoyed it more -- there are many interesting expressionist scenes and some real intimation of the uncanny. Unfortunately all of this is attached to a story that is self-congratulatory and patriotic in a showy way. A few more real dark edges, with everything not being so clearly explained, would have made for a more powerful film.

MartinHafer I know that this film has a wonderful reputation and the other reviews are all very favorable, but somehow I couldn't get very excited about this film. Perhaps I felt the material was just too familiar, perhaps the movie just opened up the trauma I experienced when I was forced to read "Faust" while in college (this was 25 years ago and I STILL cringe at the thought of reading all 25,000 lines of Goethe's rambling tale). All I know is that I wasn't caught up in the story and to me, with a few exceptions, seemed rather unremarkable. Here are the exceptions. First, there were some very nice performances--Walter Huston was very good as was Edward Arnold. Second, the film had very nice cinematography and just looked lovely--with a nice mythical quality about it. On the down side, the main character seemed like an idiot and I didn't care that the Devil was going to get his soul. The film did nothing to create sympathy for the jerk. In addition, the film really went on too long and the wonderful courtroom scene was way, way too short. Overall, an interesting time-passer but it hardly seemed like a classic to me.

classicsoncall If the devil's in the details, then this is one film that deserves the accolades that have been long in coming. The beauty of it's black and white cinematography is wonderfully complemented by the ground breaking lighting techniques employed by director William Dieterle. When Mr. Scratch (Walter Huston) makes his first appearance on screen, I couldn't help but think back to that eerie street lamp scene from "The Exorcist" made decades later.Storywise, the tale could have been plucked from the headlines of modern day newspapers - except instead of "Don't let this country go to the devil", it seems we're now making a headlong dive into the throes of Hades. A simpler time required a simpler message, and one about a man saving his own soul instead of trading it for seven years of good luck and prosperity might now seem incredibly naive. That's why it's not such a bad idea to get back to those films of the 1940's that conveyed a sensibility and charm about the American experience that finds it hard to withstand the attacks leveled against it today by high minded elites in academia and the press. A jury of the damned would probably put Daniel Webster on trial today.Most of the players aren't household names today, but back in the day you probably couldn't have cast the principals any better. Edward Arnold was tapped to replace Thomas Mitchell who actually filmed a number of scenes as Daniel Webster before he was injured in an accident on the set. It's surprising actually to see the number of film credits James Craig has over the course of his career, since he remains unknown today. A Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper in the Jabez Stone role would probably have given the film a more enthusiastic audience when it first came out, but of course that's twenty-twenty hindsight. The sultry, nay devilish Simone Simon is the perfect counterpoint to the sweetness of Anne Shirley's Mary Stone.Matching the film's crisp photography is that wonderful Bernard Herman score, vieing for the honor as one of his best. All in all a treasure and a treat from an era of film making that produced some of the best of all time.