The character:	Old Scratch
The actor:	Walter Huston
The movie:	The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

Within ten minutes of Faust, F.W. Murnau puts the image of Mephistopheles above and around an unsuspecting, celebrating town, with one wing rising to blot out the sun itself. It is, quite possibly, the most spellbinding film image of the past century. In performances of Gounod’s Faust, Mephistopheles performs “Le veau d’or” from above the ensemble, weaving and moving his hands about as the townspeople look up at this exceptional figure. He’s there to be seen, and this is the image I think most of us carry of the wily devil, an image that emphasizes his might, the way of adulation that he inspires.

Murnau’s Faust has left another impression of Mephistopheles with me which is nearly as strong as the image of the enveloped burg. Faust woos Gretchen. Meanwhile, Mephistopheles comes in and does a series of magic tricks for little kids that astounds Gretchen’s aunt, Marthe. The spectacularly profound image which puts its nails in your eyeballs in the beginning of the movie is still reverberating by the time that you get to Mephistopheles doing hijinks with a middle-aged lady. If he went to the college in the ’90s, this Mephistopheles would be neither the evil jock nor the freaky computer science major with a Newt Gingrich tattoo. He would be the lighthearted guy who no one ever sees in class but likes to say, “Just joshin’ you, bro,” and then ride off on a cheap bicycle.

That Mephistopheles is the one much closer to Old Scratch, a fundamental American played by a Canadian great. William Dieterle, a German from the Palatinate who came to California mere months before the Hessian-raised Murnau died there, developed command of chiaroscuro and fog and deep shadow. The biopics for which he is most famous are perhaps less stylized and effective than the work of Murnau or John Ford, back when Ford was still hero-worshipping Murnau. By 1939, Dieterle’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame proved that, at his best, he could be as masterful as either of those legendary dictators. The Devil and Daniel Webster provided less opportunity, but Dieterle still took it when able, as in the scene where Old Scratch introduces his All-American jury of wicked men who come up the stairs from Hell.

Thus does Old Scratch become adequately threatening, recognizably demonic enough to conjure up perdition. But Walter Huston, nearly equidistant from his deeply sympathetic work in Dodsworth and his gleeful consarned performance in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, does not easily signify damnation for us. Old Scratch, Mephistopheles, call him what you will, is much closer to the bored, gambling Satan of Job than the majestic, unquenchable Lucifer of Paradise Lost. Whom the devils would destroy, they first make upwardly mobile. It works on Jabez Wilson, whose nwefound store of wealth makes him so vulnerable that only the venerable senator Daniel Webster has a chance to argue his case against Old Scratch’s prosecution. Yankee Mephistopheles breaks the fourth wall at the end of the movie, as if to say that despite having received a marvelous cautionary tale, none of us in the audience would be able to adequately resist the Dutch gold in our own barns if it were to pop up.

None of us are supposed to get what we want, at least not totally. Whether it’s the devil of bargains, the monkey’s paw, or the Streisand effect, each granted wish means a response of super-Newtonian blowback. Armed with his chipper patter and a cocked hat, Walter Huston’s Old Scratch makes terrific havoc of the one moron he happens to run across. How many others are his sycophants and toadies, beyond redemption because they lacked access to the silver tongue of New England’s greatest orator?