![]() ![]() ![]() Pierre Fresnay ( The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934, Le Corbeau -The Raven 1943) is french artist Roland Brissot, who can’t get the girl or sell a painting until one night after Irène ( Josseline Gaël) storms out of the little cafe frustrated with him for not being a success and a bore, Mélisse the cook ( Noël Roquevert ) brings over a bottle of wine and offers to help the down and out painter. And so he begins to relate an incredible story… They plead with Roland Brissot to tell them what has brought him here. He panics of course.Īs it is a tradition at this tavern to be told unbelievable stories by Monsieur Notary. Once at the phone, the lights go out, and when they come back on and the chaos settles, the package is missing. He is called to the phone by someone asking for him by name. He acts as if he is being pursued by the devil himself. They immediately have mistrust of this man, as he is not amiable and does not wish to mix with them at all. As they wait to be fed, a strange man dressed in black carrying a wrapped package under his left arm, his immovable hand gloved in stiff black leather storms into the tavern with a gust of secrets and urgency at this back. These characters are comical and colorful as they all want to eat, and are suspicious of Roland, who we haven’t been introduced to yet. It opens with a small village tavern filled with people who have been detained by an avalanche. As synchronicity often rears it’s playful head when I do companion posts Carnival of Sinners also frames a gathering of people, much like the later post’s ‘angry women villagers’ who set the tenor for both films as something fantastical Palau’s amiable little grinning devil is perhaps one of my favorite portrayals of Old Nick as he reveals himself to others as a mild mannered civil servant in a bowler hat, when he is actually on a duplicitous mission to abscond with the soul’s of desperate men. With an incredible score by Roger Dumas, that lends a magical sound track to the story!īased on Gérard de Nerval’s novel, the film creates a hallucinatory world of monochromatic imagery, with noir like edges & shadows, Gothic & theatrically macabre masks and a gruesome narrative about a disembodied charmed left hand. This film has fast become one of my favorite fantasy/horror films….Ĭarnival of Sinners or La Main Du Diable (The Devil’s Hand) is a brilliant and hilariously dark morality play about being careful what you wish for and what is the meaning of life and the pursuit of physical pleasure and earthly desires, if you must lose your eternal soul in the end. Directed by the silent film era auteur Maurice Tourneur, (father of Jacques Tourneur Curse of the Demon 1957, Cat People 1942, I Walked With a Zombie 1943, Out of the Past 1947 ) this fantasy- horror film creates a tumultuous Mephistophelean voyage of surreal and striking imagery. ![]()
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