Doktor Faustus

It was an ambitious undertaking for Richard Burton, to film Christopher Marlowe's classic Dr. Faustus with an untried amateur cast. I'd say he got a mixed bag of results.

Well, they weren't all that amateur, they were the members of the Oxford Dramatic Society and quite a number of them went on to have substantial careers in film and theater. Fans of the Doctor Who series will recognize Ian Marter who played Harry Sullivan during the Tom Baker reign as the Doctor, he's probably the most well known of the cast.

Of course there's Elizabeth Taylor who plays the brief part of Helen of Troy who in legend is ultimate in feminine beauty. She has no dialog, but she makes her presence known.

Faustus, a man who devotes his entire life to the pursuit of knowledge and somehow feels he's left a lot out of his life. Piety and service to God ain't cutting it any more. He makes a deal with Lucifer himself and even gets one of the fallen angels, Mephistopheles to act as a personal servant and conveyor of Faustus's wishes to the Prince of Darkness.

Of course he gets what he wants, but there's a day of reckoning and Faustus just simply doesn't want to cough up the soul. What do you expect from a guy who constantly refers to himself in the third person? Faustus is rather full of himself.

From what little research I did, Richard Burton made a concerted effort in this film to perform it close to Marlowe's own vision. There seems to be a few versions of this out there and it's all open to speculation.

It was an ambitious undertaking, not entirely successful, but not a total failure either. And Elizabeth Taylor looks pretty good in it.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Richard Burton and Nevill Coghill; Screenplay by Coghill, from Christopher Marlowe's play; Produced by Richard Burton and Richard McWhorter for Columbia Pictures. Photography by Gabor Pogany; Edited by John Shirley; Music by Mario Nascimbene. Starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Andreas Teuber.

Pretentious big-budget repertory theatrical tries to use sumptuous sets and photography to create a fantasy classic, but it turns out to be a pithy Burton ego trip, eminently forgettable and one of the weakest cinema incarnations of the Faust legend.

Richard Burton co-produced, co-directed, and stars in this adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's play "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus", concerning an aged 16th century German scholar who conjures up Mephistopheles, servant to Lucifer. Despite a warring of conscience in which saints and demons both attempt to sway Faustus to their side, the conflicted doctor signs his soul over to the Devil in exchange for lust and power, quickly discovering the black magic not living up to its promise. Marlowe's poetry, like subterranean Shakespeare, seems to flow naturally from Burton, and the combination of soliloquy and performance is a lively one. The art direction, production design, and cinematography are all first-rate, with pop-art colors insanely, imaginatively blended together like bewitched Jell-O powder. Elizabeth Taylor's intermittent (and mostly silent) entrances and exits as Helen of Troy probably do the picture more harm than good, but Burton is in fine form (after an unsure start) and Andreas Teuber cuts a striking figure as the Devil's Aid. The film has the same late-'60s, hallucinogenic quality of the other-worldly "Barbarella" (and no wonder: both pictures were made in Rome under the auspices of movie mogul Dino de Laurentiis). You can't take your eyes off "Doctor Faustus"--and, for fear of missing anything, you wouldn't want to. **1/2 from ****

One thing about Richard Burton...the movies he makes are never mediocre. They are either very good or very bad.

I'm not sure on which end that Doctor Faustus falls. It wasn't exactly what I expected...Burton's adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's play on the legend of Faust. The sets and much of the cinematography is masterful...the problem is the script, which is done completely in Old English and in virtual iambic pentameter, which makes it very hard for the average person to understand.

I saw this movie donkeys years ago, and was captured by it. In my book Richard Burton can do no wrong, and this is no exception. E Taylor added a nice bit of fluff as Fausts love interest, (how ironic). The movie was very deep and thought provoking, I would highly recommend it to any one with literary appreciation. I appreciated the fact that it was done in black and white, it just added to the Gothic nature of the movie. I found the special effects also quite appropriate, (the worms in the skull, etc). This is indeed a classic movie, and I will make every effort to add it to my collection. In the mean time I would invite anyone who loves a good classic drama to hunt out this fine, old film