Shadowshow

All from Maurice Tourneur’s beautiful LA MAIN DU DIABLE (THE HAND OF THE DEVIL) — a sort of moving tableaux sequence that tells the history of the satanic mitt around which the narrative revolves. I had these images left over and didn’t want to let them go to waste.

The rest of the movie has a more conventionally photographed and designed feel, with composition in depth rather than reduced to the appearance of a Lotte Reininger silhouette film. But it’s still magnificently moody, a supernatural romantic noir along the lines of Duvivier’s FLESH AND FANTASY ~

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Hands Up!

THE FORGOTTEN hits the stands once more over at The Auteurs’ Notebook, where Tourneur pere et fils come under analysis, and we ponder the question of why it is so few filmmakers have their legs amputated. A strange resonance is generated, since we were just discussing REAR WINDOW and Cornell Woolrich, a literary peg-leg.