A devilishly good film

August 3rd, 2009 at 10:55am Will Pfeifer

Over at one of my favorite movie blogs, Shadowplay, David Cairns delivers an excellent write-up of the 1941 fantasy, THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER. He goes through the film scene-by-scene and points out many reasons why this is one of the great American films. Here, for example, is his praise of actor Walter Huston, who plays the title role (and no, I’m not referring to Daniel Webster)…

Walter Huston is possibly my favourite actor of all time. He’s not only effective in an impossibly wide variety of parts (basically, anything that doesn’t depend on conventional good looks), he can adapt his whole approach to acting to suit the role: he’s hammy here, in just the right way (remember his advice to his son: “Always give ‘em a good show, and always travel First Class.”), but he can bring it right down.

It’s a long piece, but if you’re a fan of classic films, I think you’ll get a kick out of it. There are spoilers galore, though, so if you haven’t seen THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, you might want to give it a look, first. There’s an excellent Criterion disc available (shown above), and the film shows up fairly often on Turner Classic Movies.

And, if you’re dying for even more about THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER, check out this piece I wrote two years ago on my own blog. I won’t pretend to be the film scholar David Cairn is (this guy has seen everything!), but I think I have an interesting thing or two to say about the movie.

Entry Filed under: Classic movies