A Film Canon

The strongest instance of American Gothic since The Wind, The Devil And Daniel Webster extrapolates a powerful Expressionist aesthetic from the clash of Daniel Webster's (Edward Arnold) "lightnings and denunciations" with the "glittering eyes" of the jury of the damned, before whom he appears to dispute the Faustian contract drawn up between New Hampshire farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) and the devil (Walter Huston). This centres on a bright, unearthly light that fuses the infernal realm with the gold that it temporarily provides, most memorably in Stone's dream-house, filled with whitewashed walls and objects, crystal chandeliers, and a dream-mistress clad in sparkling clothes and jewels. Concomitantly, low ceilings and skies ensure that the space that light opens up is as uncanny as light itself, while a run of unseasonable weather (hailstorms in August, snowstorms in June) imbues regular sunshine with a similar strangeness. This produces a supernatural queasiness, embodied by a cacaphony of hysterical farmyard animals that both vocalise the devil's infernal jig, and confirm the extent to which this dimension is atmospheric, abstracted from the three major figures to a much greater extent than occurs in Benet's short story, and so transforming them, in turn, from figures into characters - particularly clear in the case of the devil, whose folksy, mischievous charisma is creepily undermined by the last shot. As a result, Webster's summative invocation of the American spirit feels tangential to his more specific criticism of corrupt business, and the devilish loan sharks that practice it, inspiring the introduction of a subplot dealing with (latent) unionism.