Murnau's "Faust" film is quite clearly made up of two parts: the first is based on the folk legend and shows how Faust initially agrees to the pact with Mephisto in order to banish the plague from the town but then, bewitched by the glitter and charm of eternal youth, subordinates himself entirely to the devil and leads a dissolute life. The devil has made a pact with the Archangel that he may rule on Earth if he can distract Faust from his ambition; he therefore drags the learned man from one adventure to the next and flies around the world with him on his magic coat.

The second part of the film, which is closely based on Goethe's drama, focuses more and more on Gretchen's tragedy. Faust seduces the girl and kills her brother Valentin in a duel. Her mother dies of grief and the abandoned girl becomes insane. She beds her newborn child in a snowdrift which she mistakes for a crib. Gretchen is found with her frozen child, accused of murdering it and sentenced to death on the pyre. Faust's conscience awakes; regardless of the loss of eternal youth, he hastens to Gretchen at the execution site; they climb atop the pyre together. Chastened, both return to God. Mephisto has lost his gamble.

When Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau completed his "Faust" film in 1926, he had reached the climax of his career. With the films produced by Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang and G.W. Pabst, the German silent film had reached a standard that was virtually unbeatable with the technical means available. Murnau made use of all these achievements in FAUST, blending them into a single smooth whole. Through the use of outstanding light and dark contrasts and astonishing trick effects, he managed to make the fantastic appear real and the real appear fantastic. The film's entire message is directed towards the metaphysical and symbolic discrepancy between light and dark, between love of life and real love.

In contrast to his earlier films (SCHLOSS VOGELOED, PHANTOM, DER LETZTE MANN, etc.), Murnau's FAUST was exclusively produced in the studio; the studio settings sometimes become captivating visions, such as the snow-covered field with the windswept tree where Gretchen beds her sick child amid the decaying fences. Some of the Gretchen scenes, on the other hand, degenerate into pure bombast oozing with false sweetness.

One of the film's striking features is the intensive stylization of the images, which still creates a major effect today. The film is set at the end of the Middle Ages, a period whose mystic atmosphere is expressed through strongly contrasting illumination, such as is found in Rembrandt's paintings. The fascinating effects of light and shadow and the use of flowing misty clouds, as well as subtle image transitions and double exposures allow Murnau to reproduce the supernatural in impressive images.

The camera has been freed of all its bonds and draws the viewer right into the heart of the action. The flight across towns and villages on Mephisto's coat is positively breath-taking. The built-in camera in a specially constructed roller-coaster captures a wide variety of extremely rare and strange impressions.

The formal attraction of the "Faust" film is due in no small part to the balanced and always dramatically, psychologically justified pictorial compositions. It is a characteristic feature of Murnau's mature style that he frequently places a larger-than-life figure in the foreground, creating a very strong depth effect for each scene. A strangely foreshortened victim of the plague with huge feet is more reminiscent of a portrayal of Christ by Mantegna or Holbein. Gretchen cradling her child in the ruins of a snowed-over hut, her head wrapped in a coat, could come straight from any Flemish baroque painter's portrayal of the Madonna.

The exemplary film book by the French director Eric Rohmer "L'organisation de l'espace dans le 'Faust' de Murnau", German version "Murnau's Faust film", published by Hanser Verlag, Munich, 1980, is essential preparatory reading.

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1925/1926

Production Year

1926

color

b/w

Aspect Ratio

1:1,33

Type

Feature Film, Silent Film

Genre

Literary Adaptation, Drama

Topic

Literature, Weimar Republic, Film History

Available Media

DVD

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

English (en)