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| Devil in the machine | | MARQUEE |
| Jai Arjun Singh / New Delhi Jul 12, 2009, 00:32 IST |
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Satan and the movies go back a long way. In cinema’s earliest days, there were alarm-mongers who denounced the bioscope and the movie camera as “the devil’s instruments”. To be fair, some of the dark mutterings about this unholy new technology are easy to understand. The first generation of movie viewers were scarcely equipped to deal with the concept of moving images on a screen (hence the possibly apocryphal story about people running out of the Paris theatre where the Lumiere Brothers screened a 40-second film of a train pulling into a station) and their reptile brains were even less prepared for the little shocks they would receive each time there was a cut. When innovative directors like Georges Méliès began using special effects such as time-lapse photography (which allowed a carriage to abruptly vanish in the midst of a busy street scene), early viewers were thoroughly frazzled.
Incidentally, it was a Méliès film Le Manoir du Diable, made in 1896 — that first portrayed Satan on screen (you can see parts of it here: http://tinyurl.com/myyy53). In the decades that followed, people learnt to stop worrying and love the new medium, but the cinematic obsession with Beelzebub and his dark servants continued. Silent movies depicted the Faust legend (where a man sells his soul to the devil, aka Mephistopheles), a line of horror films featured creatures of the night — wolf men, vampires, deranged scientists — that answer to a single master, and there were more straightforward depictions in biblical films such as The Greatest Story Ever Told. In more recent times, Jack Nicholson — he of the maniacal grin and permanently arched eyebrows — made a career of playing a Satan type. And there have been more alluring versions, such as Liz Hurley’s temptress in the remake of Bedazzled.
But for my money, the very best screen portrayal of Lucifer is in the masterful 1941 movie The Devil and Daniel Webster (the Criterion DVD which is now available in many stores). In this transposing of the Faust story to mid-19th century rural America, Walter Huston, one of the best character actors of his time, is the grizzled Mr Scratch who buys a poor farmer’s soul in exchange for a hoard of gold coins. The expression “You can’t take your eyes off him when he’s on the screen” probably didn’t originate with Huston’s performance, but it should have. He’s mesmeric, diabolical and charming all at once, in a folksy, Midwestern sort of way. Compared to him, Jack Nicholson looks like he belongs in a church choir.
The great impact of this devil lies in the acting as well as in the conception and appearance of the character. Scratch isn’t a supernatural figure arbitrarily thrust into the story — it’s possible to think of him as a roguish tramp sitting about on the sidelines, stirring people up — but the viewer can never have the slightest doubt about who he really is; this is exactly what old Lucifer would be like if he tucked away his pointy tail, hid his horns beneath a crumpled cap and visited a farmstead in the 1800s. The lesson is that the devil is always around, keeping an eye on things, waiting to profit from the weaknesses of men; he fits effortlessly into any time and place, and his appeal is universal.
The movie’s last shot, where Scratch looks straight into the camera, grins and points at the viewer, would have caused serious nightmares to turn-of-the-century audiences. But for us, slightly wiser folk, it’s a reminder that the best films have the hypnotic, soul-stirring power of a deal made with the devil — even if the consequences aren’t so dire.
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