Michael Draine's Twisted Vista
Faust
(Kino) DVD $24.95
Though Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau is best known
for Nosferatu (1922), Faust (1926) may be the
director’s supreme achievement. With art
directors Walter Rohrig (Caligari, Fritz Lang’s
Destiny) and Robert Herlth (Destiny, The Last
Laugh), Murnau constructed a mythical universe
as impressive as the future world of Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis. (The simultaneous production
of Faust and Metropolis nearly bankrupted the
UFA studio.) Faust opens with one of the silent
screen’s most unforgettable images: a titanic,
horned, winged presence, casting its
pestilential shadow over a medieval German
village. The film’s ultimate message of the
power of Love is encoded in the opening
sequence’s beams of celestial light that blind
the Devil, amidst smoke and flame.
Played by Emil Jannings, Mephistopheles
manifests in three forms: first as the
winged beast; then as an impish mendicant with
luminous eyes; then as a fatuous dandy who
guides Faust through a life of dissolute
indulgence. Jannings’ Expressionistic acting
style is perfectly suited to the first two
incarnations, but prove grating in the third,
comic characterization. Swedish actor Gosta
Ekman (Faust) and Camilla Horn (as Faust’s
innocent love) provide a dramatic gravity that
prevents the human element from being
overpowered by either Jannings’ antics or
Murnau’s monumental imagery.
As in most Murnau films, Faust is laced
with gay in-jokes. Though the dandy
Mephisto breaks the Gothic mood of the
first act, the devil’s advances on Gretchen’s
repugnant Aunt Marthe provides Murnau
with license to satirize bourgeois notions of
heterosexual domestic bliss. The richly shaded,
artifact-free presentation appears identical to
the transfer used for Golden Age of German
Cinema laserdisc. While image quality is above
average for a silent film, this 1996 David		Music Review Index
Shepherd restoration could benefit from updated
digital scratch removal. The projection speed
looks a little too fast, and the font chosen
for the intertitles more closely resembles		Twisted Cinema
Celtic calligraphy than the original German
blackletter glimpsed in the opening credits.
Timothy Brock graces the film with a powerful
orchestral score, intensifying the tale's epic
sweep and spectacle. An apparent influence
on Carl Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc,
Faust stands as a timeless example of
cinematic art, a rare synthesis of uncom-
promised personal vision and major studio
production values.
Published in Scarlet Street #46, Nov 2003
www.kino.com