Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Melanie Bouvet The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

morrison-dylan-fan Since having enjoyed seeing his splendid Valley of Hell which I watched with 5 other films that were affected by the Occupation of France,I decided that when watching 100 French films over 100 days that one of them would be from auteur film maker Maurice Tourneur.Talking to a fellow IMDber about Valley,I was caught by surprise,when this very kind IMDber gave me a chance to view another Tourneur title,which led to me getting ready to shake the devils hand.The plot:Hit by an avalanche,the guests find themselves stuck in the hotel.Walking out of the snow, Roland Brissot enters the hotel and asks for a room. Spotting Brissot go to the room,his fellow guests notice that he's lost his left hand,and is also carrying a small coffin.Suddenly,the police run in saying that they are after a little man carrying a coffin.Whilst Brissot takes a call,the lights go out,and Brissot's coffin is stolen.Desperate for help to find the stolen coffin,Brissot decides to reveal to the guests the devilish deal he made with the strange little man.View on the film:Cracking a chopped off left hand over the opening credits (!) director Maurice Tourneur and cinematographer Armand Thirard steam a chilling Gothic Horror atmosphere. Land locking the hotel, Tourneur explores every corner with refined whip-pans that sink into the darkness. Offering a quick shock in the opening credits, Tourneur spends the rest of the film brilliantly handling a foreboding mood,where a dazzling use of silhouettes,huge lingering shadows and a gathering which sends Brissot's (played by a superb,worn-down Pierre Fresnay) deal into the fantastically creepy.Made by the Nazi-run Continental Studio,the screenplay by Jean- Paul Le Chanois gets a grip on Gérard de Nerval's novel to deliver strikingly sharp allegorical shots, via making Brissot'a attempts to get out of the deal lead to hyper- inflation which Brissot cannot escape. Foreshadowing the Gothic final notes with Brissot's artistic hand,Chanois makes Brissot's downfall a devilish delight,with Chanois drowning Brissot with a little devil,a curse hanging over his head,and the most terrifying thing of them all,a pampered diva (played by an icy Josseline Gaël-who got banned from working in movies after joining the French Gestapo) ,as Brissot tries to break the grip of the devils hands.

RanchoTuVu A desperate man escapes into a crowded inn in the French Alps and tells the hungry guests his story which the movie reveals as an extended flashback to his days in Paris as a failing artist who seemingly sells his soul to the devil to gain a mysterious left hand (a talisman) from a chef who was only too eager to get rid of it. Once in possession of the hand, the woman he has courted, who had (appropriately) worked in a shop selling gloves, accepts his marriage proposal after previously cruelly rejecting him as a talentless loser. Told in a film full of expressionistic sets, the story captures so many significant and fascinating details in the settings and the various characters, everyone of whom plays parts that interweave remarkably well to make up what must be considered a real classic.

Edgar Soberon Torchia A few years ago I was attracted to the work of French filmmaker Maurice Tourneur, after reading his IMDb profile. I already knew that his film «La main du diable» had a cult following, and that he was the father of Jacques Tourneur, the famous director of «Cat People», «I Walked with a Zombie» and «Out of the Past»; but I had no idea of his own prestige and importance in the history of cinema. During the silent film period, Maurice Tourneur was as popular as David W. Griffith and Thomas Harper Ince in Hollywood, and his movies had a strong influence due to their visual design refinement. I am yet to see his version of James Fenimore Cooper's «Last of the Mohicans» (1920), selected to the National Film Registry by the US Congress, but I have already seen his adaptations of Maurice Maeterlinck's «The Blue Bird» (also selected to the National Film Registry), and Joseph Conrad's «Victory» (1919). I have just finished watching «La main du diable», a French production made during the last stage of his career, when Tourneur returned to France, tired of the commercialism of the Hollywood films. Connections are often made between Nazi occupation in France and certain films that are or seem to be allegories of this state, as Carné's «Les visiteurs du soir» (1942), or Clouzot's «Le corbeau» (1943), so I would not be surprised if there is an essay linking «La main du diable» to Nazi presence in French territory. If it's true that this reading is possible, the film is fascinating if one takes it as it is, a moral tale with elements of fantasy and subtle horror: in an Alpine hotel, the dull confinement of a group of travelers that are trapped by an avalanche, brightens up with the sudden arrival of a nervous man, with a stump and a small box under his arm. After the box is stolen during a blackout, the travelers become a captive audience (as we, the spectators), listening to the man as he tell his story, from being a luckless painter, to buying a sinister talisman that brings him fame, love and fortune, and being cheated by the devil. The story of course is similar to other cinematic pacts with the devil, as those made by Faust, the Prague student, Jabez Stone in «The Devil and Daniel Webster», the phantom of the Paradise, the investigator in «Angel Heart» or the young lawyer in «The Devil's Advocate», among others. But Tourneur, as Murnau in his «Faust», fascinates us with his visual reading of Gérard Nerval's novel, and creates a glowing monochromatic world of oblique lines, shadows, masks, and an affable little devil, played by a smiling old man who, behind the appearance of a helpless civil servant, hides his treacherous essence. The film is a well-mounted clockwork that reaches its expected conclusion with the same punctuality the devil demands of his creditors. If by chance it crosses your path, don't miss «La main du diable», a work that only asks for 78 minutes of your time.

writers_reign Trivia buffs may like to note that even as Maurice Tourneur was shooting this Gothic tale for Continental in Paris his son Jacques was shooting Cat People in Hollywood. This is a very superior piece of Gothic if anybody asks you; it bows to convention insofar as in a lonely inn subject to power failure a stranger narrates the story of how he, as a struggling artist was persuaded to 'buy' for peanuts a 'talisman' in the shape of a severed human left hand from a restauranteur. Of course his fortunes did improve dramatically and equally inevitably the piper came round one day to collect the payment for calling the tune. In a masterstroke the 'devil' takes the shape of a Caspar Milquetoast, a bowler-hatted bailiff who informs our hero that the 'price' doubles every day he keeps the hand. Naturally his mistress chooses that moment to take it on the Jesse Owens with his savings leaving him to face a mounting bill. In a second masterstroke the artist (Pierre Fresnay) comes face to face with previous 'owners' of the hand, beginning with a monk who declined to use his artistic talent for the good of God. Our artist finds that he must stump up - if you'll forgive the expression - the collective tab for all of these previous owners. Made under German occupation it would not have been hard in 1943 to locate a hidden 'message' here but sixty years on it still works as a psychological horror story. Excellent.