Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage

Faust is my favourite German film, a timeless tale brought to life visually perfect by Murnau in 1926. The photography and special effects although obviously constrained by the prevailing technology was stunning and relentless, a tour de force of camera trickery to bring the power of the story across to Artheads and ordinary folk alike. Trouble is, it's a German b&w silent film so mainly Artheads and a few like me will ever see it for its beauty. Sunrise from a year later takes some beating but Faust does it easily.

The Devil wants to rule so places a morally dubious wager that if he wins Dr. Faust's soul he wins the Earth. Faust falls into the snare and so begins his descent into Hell, along with the woman he has in one night of passion – "No man can resist Evil". After 9/11 can we really be sure who won? There's so many memorable scenes: The Devil lowering over the town (Jannings having to spend hours perched uncomfortably over billowing soot until Murnau was happy with the shot); Faust throwing his books on the fire in his fantastic room (with piles of dangerous nitrate film deliberately going up to help); the un-cgi magic carpet ride; Gretchen with her baby in the snow etc. Ekman and Jannings were especially superb in their respective roles, but everyone and everything played their parts well.

The print is a knockout remaster, the menacing atmosphere whenever Faust or Mephisto are in shot is palpable as was only possible with nitrate film stock. Thoroughly recommended to those even only mildly interested who've never seen it before, one I will hopefully watch repeatedly in the future.

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was the most important director of the German expressionism era. He made 22 films from which only 11 have persisted. Murnau often made several different versions of his films, which made it impossible to tell which was the original one. Faust was no exception; he made 9 different versions of it whose editing, rhythm and acting differ from each other. F.W. Murnau did a lot of breakthroughs in cinema - he's the most influential filmmaker of his time. For instance in his earlier film Der Letzte Mann (1924, The Last Laugh) Murnau used the camera as a character for the very first time. It was the first time the audience couldn't tell when you were watching the events as an outsider and when as a character. Faust is no lesser. Eric Rohmer has written about it in his dissertation and Herman G. Weinberg saw Faust as the most beautiful film ever made.

Everybody knows the German writer Goethe who wrote Faust. But the story did live before his play. It lived as a folktale. And this is where the critics did wrong. They thought that Murnau's Faust was a fiasco; probably because they tried to compare it to the original play. But F.W. Murnau did Faust (1926) based on the folktale. So the philosophy of Goethe's Faust was left away. The production company (UFA) of Faust also produced another artistic film, Metropolis by Fritz Lang. When the audience didn't like either of these films the company failed.

Faust is a story about God and Satan who wager. A man, Faust, agrees to sell his soul to Satan so he can have all the power of the world. First he wants to use the power to help the diseased people but the temptations of eternal youth and beauty win. "Damned be the illusion of youth!" Faust is a timeless story because the idea of selling one's soul will always be there. Faustic contracts are still made. There is only one thing that can terminate the contract. Liebe - Love. The flaming word appears on the screen to assure us. Earlier I mentioned the new camera-work of The Last Laugh. But Faust did something new too. It was the first film that was based on the metaphorical force of light and shadow. The use of shadows in Faust is symbolic and brilliant. When talking about light and Murnau one might be reminded of Nosferatu (1922), a Gothic vampire story by F.W. Murnau, where the beams of light killed Nosferatu.

Faust deals with essential and timeless themes. On the surface the themes are good and evil but Faust is much more complex than that. I would recommend this masterpiece of the German Expressionism to all film lovers. I wouldn't be surprised if one said that Faust is the best film ever made. F.w. Murnau manages to capture real humane emotions.

By 1925 UFA, German cinema's pioneer production company, was almost collapsing under the weight of mounting financial difficulties, having lost over eight million dollars in the fiscal year just ended. It was at this point that American film studios found the perfect opportunity they've been looking for to finally defeat their one opponent in the market of continental Europe. It was ironic that a film industry born out of the necessity of WWI and Germany's inability to provide American, British or French films in the years between 1914 and 1919 would go on to become Hollywood's number one opponent. Indeed Paramount and MGM offered to subsidize UFA's huge debt to the Deutsche Bank by lending it four million dollars at 7.5 percent interest in exchange for collaborative rights to UFA's studios, theaters, and personnel - an arrangement which clearly worked in the American companies' favor. The result was the foundation of the Parufamet (Paramount-UFA-Metro) Distribution Company in early 1926.

This is only tangential to FAUST but important nonetheless to place the film in its correct historical context. Both as FW Murnau's last German film before he left for Hollywood and as UFA's most expensive production to that date. It is no wonder that within a year of accepting Hollywood as business partners, UFA was already showing losses of twelve million dollars and was forced to seek another loan, when FAUST, a film that cost them 2 million dollars alone and took six months to film only made back half of its budget at the box office. FAUST would go on to be succeeded by Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS as the most expensive German production but it remained FW Murnau's aufwiedersehen to Weimar cinema. He was one of many German film artists and technicians that migrated to sunny California following the Parufamet agreement (Fritz Lang would follow a few years later, having refused Goebbels' offer to lead the national film department for Nazi Germany, along with others like Paul Leni, Billy Wilder, Karl Freund and Ernst Lubitsch).

Weimar cinema wouldn't make it past the 1930's and FW Murnau's career would come to an abrupt end with his death at 42 in a car accident, but FAUST, as the last German production, not only in nationality, but also in style and finesse, definitely deserves its place next to 1922's NOSFERATU in the pantheon of German Expressionism. Frontloaded in terms of spectacle and dazzling visuals, this retelling of Goethe's classic version of Dr. Faust's story is as slow paced and dark as Nosferatu but with the kind of fantastic, mystical and romantic blend that characterized German post-war cinema. A cinema aimed at repressed lower middle-classes which, in the absence of a national identity swept away by war, were now turning to a new cultural identity conscious of the social realities of the times. In that sense, Murnau's Faust is part escapism spectacle, part edifying fable on the corruption of evil and the redeeming qualities of love and forgiveness.

And if the story is overwrought melodrama by today's standards, the magnificent sets constructed by UFA technicians and special effects work stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the best from the 20's. Mephisto looming black and gigantic over a town swept by plague is an iconic image etched on the same pantheon wall of German Expressionism as Count Orlok's shadow. The angels of death riding on their horses with beams of light shooting through them combines the dark fantasy of the production design with expressive lighting, the kind of which would eventually become shaped into film noir by directors like Otto Preminger and Fritz Lang. Gösta Ekman as Faust (superbly made-up as an old man to make even Welles green with envy) and Emil Jannings as Mephisto stand out among the cast.

My first silent film lasted over two hours. Dialog full of screens after everything's been said. To be honest, I was surprised at how there was never a point of down, there was never a realization that I was watching a silent film, though it did take a bit of getting used to in the beginning. Some might get pushed away due to the fact that the screen transfer isn't great, or that the music has been recently dubbed, but I found it all to fit perfectly. The acting in this film is more than over expectation, that made me believe in the story from start to finish. By the end I had a new found admiration for the makers of movies from our past, and what standards they can set for movies now.

(Contains spoilers)

Goethe's FAUST means to German-Speaking countries what HAMLET means to the English-Speaking world: The terror of schoolchildren forced to write essays and memorize its most famous quotations. Murnau's silent screen version offers us the unique opportunity to enjoy all the suspense of the play without being bothered by the immortal lines of its great author...The version I have seen was restored in 1995 by Luciano Berriatua and offers everything a film fan can hope for: Masterly direction, awesome visuals (at a time where sets were built, not painted with a computer!) and knock-out-performances.

The divine force (here personified by a youth with swan-wings) and Mephisto (Emil Jannings as black crow with goat-horns) struggle over the world domination and open the competition over Faust's (Gösta Ekman) soul. Mephisto spreads his wings over the city and the plague breaks out. Unable to find a cure for the disease, Faust conjures up the devil. Mephisto, now the prototype of middle-aged gluttony, appears and offers Faust a try-out-contract for just one day. This poor old fellow gets his youth back, but the devil is a pretty good psychologist: The very moment when Faust is about to seduce the duchess of Parma, the most beautiful woman on earth, his sands have run out. Now, of course, he is willing to sign the long-term-contract...With a filthy grin, Mephisto draws the curtains of the four-poster.

Carnal desire, however, cannot satisfy Faust for long. Innocence is, what tempts him now. Back in his home town he falls in love with Margarethe (Camilla Horn) who is on her way to church. Mephisto, on the other hand (Jannings, his upper half dressed like a shogun, his lower half in a skin-tight hose) gets hear-ache from her pious singing. The seduction scene would hardly pass today's censors: Among other things, Mephisto mixes a love-potion for Margarethe's cousin Marthe. Heated up, this poor woman starts to chase Mephisto in a slightly indecent manner...

Some scenes are of unearthly beauty, others shocking to an unbearable degree: Margarethe put on the pillory - the crowd rallies to gape at her. She drags herself along, her baby in her arms during a snow-storm - no one will help her. The devil deceives her once more with the illusion of a cradle: She puts her baby to bed - only to discover that she buried it under a blanket of snow. The vision of Margarethe's crying face follows Faust over chains of mountains...

Ekman was Ingrid Bergman's partner in the swedish version of "Intermezzo"; The other stars went Hollywood: Wilhelm became "William" Dieterle, the famous director, Camilla Horn was John Barrymore's leading lady in "The Tempest" and "Eternal Love", and Jannings was, of course, the first actor ever to win an oscar. When he returned to Germany, they rolled out the red carpet for him: he remained the most renowned german actor until his death. Sadly, he also made some propaganda films, one of them (the anti-british "Ohm Kröger") is still blacklisted.