Themes: Self-Destructive Romance, Deal With the Devil
Main Cast: Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn, Werner Fuetterer, Frida Richard
Release Year: 1926
Country: DE
Run Time: 117 minutes
Plot
Faust was the mammoth German production which won F. W. Murnau his contract with Hollywood's Fox Studios. Emil Jannings glowers his way through the role of Mephistopholes, who offers the aging Faust (Gosta Eckman) an opportunity to relive his youth, the price being Faust's soul. Though highly stylized, the film is unsettlingly realistic at times, especially during the execution of the unfortunate Gretchen. Even in old age, actress Camilla Horn could recall how close she came to genuine immolation when Murnau burned her at the stake. An American version of Faust had been planned earlier as a Mary Pickford vehicle, but Pickford's mother wanted no part of a film in which her darling daughter strangled her own baby. The scenario for Faust touches lightly upon the previous retellings by Goethe and Marlowe, but is more heavily reliant on the paintings of Pietr Breughel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
While not as well known today as Nosferatu or The Last Laugh, Faust is perhaps director F.W. Murnau's masterpiece; few films by any director can match it for the sweeping impact and beauty of its visuals or the power of its storytelling. Murnau approaches Goethe's tragedy of a man who learns all too well the price of his soul with appropriately broad dramatic strokes, and if the effect seems a bit over the top in the early reels, it hits with full melodramatic force at the end; the full, horrible impact of Faust's comeuppance is as disturbing today as it was in 1926. Gosta Ekman is fine as the luckless Faust and Emil Jannings is brilliant as Mephisto, the embodiment of cunning and evil. And the camerawork by Carl Hoffman and production design by Robert Herlith and Walter Rohrig are nothing short of astounding, creating a brilliantly controlled and beautifully painterly visual sense that's the ideal backdrop for this fable. Anyone who thinks of silent films as sluggish and amateurish has obviously never seen Faust; the home video release on Kino compliments the film's striking visuals with a superb original score by the American composer Timothy Brock that's worthy of attention on its own merits. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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