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 which he appears to dispute the Faustian contract drawn up between New Hampshire farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) and the devil (Walter Huston). This takes the form of 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, epitomised 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. As a result, Webster's summative invocation of the American spirit ultimately feels tangential to his more specific criticism of corrupt business, and the devilish loan sharks that practice it. Hence the introduction of a subplot concerning (latent) unionism, against which this corruption is defined. Similarly, Huston ensures that the devil is very much a character, albeit in such a way as to make his presence all the more sinister, culminating with the last image, in which the seduction of his spritely, mischievous charisma is creepily undermined.