[critical] Faust – 1926

Tormentor of humanity with war, plague, or famine, Mephisto believes that the earth belongs to him. The Archangel Gabriel reminds him of the name of Faust, an old scholar, a fair whose whole life is the proof that the earth is not totally submissive to Evil. Mephisto promises to turn away from God the soul of Faust. Then the earth shall be yours, promises the Archangel… In his village decimated by the plague, Faust, in despair, finds a spellbook to invoke the Devil, and sign with him a pact from 24 hours to save the sick. But the villagers are noticing it and want to stone him. In the grip of suicide, Faust accepts a new proposal from Mephisto : to regain his youth in exchange for his soul…

• Release Date : 1926

• Directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau

• Movie German

• With Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn

• Duration : 1h 46min

• Original title : Faust

Today, always in association with MrDomainePublic, the Blog Of The Film offers you to (re)discover the cult film of Murnau’s Faust.

And as always, here are a few stories around this legendary film :

* Faust is the last German film made in Germany by Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau, before that the famous director is hired by the FOX and that he decided to pursue his career in the United States.

* Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau is, in the same way that Fritz Lang or Robert Wiene, one of the most representative figures of the German expressionist cinema. Eric Rohmer, one of the main founders of the “New Wave” in France (which has been very largely influenced by German expressionism), evokes Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau as a director of engineering, with a visual world that is at once particular and innovative : “Of all the filmmakers, Murnau is perhaps the one who knew how to organize the space in his films in the most rigorous and the most inventive… The power of plastic expression is obviously not on the anecdote, in this drama known to any viewer. The contemporaries have tasted, and we feel ourselves as a kind of opera visual, staging there in lieu of partition.”

* Faust, who offers his soul to the devil in exchange for a second life, is a mythical figure from a German tale that has inspired many filmmakers, such as Brian De Palma with Phantom of the paradise (1974), Alan Parker with Angel Heart (1986), or even Mark Steven Johnson with Ghost Rider (2007).

* The actress Camilla Horn, who played the character of Gretchen, had already shot under the direction of Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau a year ago in Herr Tartüff, a film adapted from the Tartuffe of Moliere.

Have a good time !

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