By Orrin Grey
Faust (1926). Directors: F.W. Murnau. Cast: Gosta Ekman, Emil Jannings. Country: Germany.
Director F.W. Murnau is probably better known to horror aficionados for his seminal vampire film Nosferatu, but he made a number of other movies during the silent era, including the visual tour de force that is Faust.
You already know the storyline of Faust, of course, or near enough. God and the Devil make a wager over the soul of Faust, whom the Devil spends the rest of the movie trying to corrupt, eventually getting him to sell his soul – first, on a trial basis and then more permanently. There’s not much new to the storyline, though what changes there are to the myth of Faust were enough to enrage some German audiences of the time. It’s not the story where Faust really shines, though. It’s the visuals.
Prior to sitting down with Faust, I’d seen it compared favourably to Metropolis – maybe the most famous film of the German Expressionist cinema – and I can definitely see the comparison. The visuals and special effects of Faust create a world of plague and devils and magic that is easily as compelling as the futuristic cityscapes presented in Metropolis. The early shots of the film are especially effective, with skeletal figures of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding monstrous steeds through the stormy sky, or of the black-winged mass of Mephisto rising up above a village, sowing plague. There are countless moments of visual splendour in Faust, many of them virtually unsurpassed in more recent cinema and all the more impressive for the knowledge of how long ago they were created. The shots of a summoning at a crossroads, of Mephisto presenting the burning contract to Faust, and many others, have all become duly famous in film circles (or, in the cases where perhaps they haven’t, should). One scene in particular supposedly influenced the creation of the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence from Disney’s Fantasia.
The movie’s aesthetics are not its only strong suit, though. While I sometimes found the story to falter, the performance of Emil Jannings (who had previously appeared in Murnau’s The Last Laugh and in Paul Leni’s Waxworks) never did. Ranging from menacing to charming to comical, Jannings’ Mephisto brought a complexity to the Devil that would recur (though not always to such great effect) in cinematic treatments of the subject down through the years and was also a constant pleasure to watch.
For all its devilry and plague, Faust is not really a horror film, even by the standards of the time, but if you’re interested in jaw-dropping, silent-era visuals, or in film history, then it’s a movie that shouldn’t be overlooked.
You can purchase Faust from Amazon.com.