richardchatten

Ten years after Leo McCarey made a vivid contribution to rabid early fifties anti-communist paranoia with 'My Son John' he returned to the theme with 'Satan Never Sleeps'; which marked the swansong of both McCarey and Clifton Webb.

His drinking had by visibly blurred his once formidable talent; while anything resembling spectacle was plainly the work of the second unit. But on its own terms it's pretty memorable.

One of the more idiosyncratic inclusions in that singular publication 'The Fifty Worst Films of All Time'. Proudly declaring itself 'Personally Directed by D. W. Griffith", Griffith's second film bearing that title, by foregrounding The Great Emancipator went some way towards atoning for Griffith's earlier celebration of the Ku Klux Klan in 'The Birth of a Nation'; whose leading man Henry Walthall briefly appears as a Confederate colonel

As portrayed by the venerable Walter Huston young Honest Abe is as usual portrayed as a tall & gangling "unknown cornfed lawyer" arriving late for his own wedding - his ungainliness and great height further emphasised by an enormous stovepipe hat - while the makeup to make him look younger heightens the initial peculiarity of his appearance; the older Lincoln acquiring gravitas along with the beard.

As for the look of the film. Contrary to the received wisdom like many early talkies it makes agile use of the mobile camera, opening with a sweeping crane shot and bookended by a ghostly lateral track through woodland composed of a succession of atmospherically gnarled trees.