I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Blistering performances.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

"Faust" is a German silent movie from almost 90 years ago. Of course it is also still in black and white and the runtime differs depending on what version you have. The original ran for 85 minutes roughly, but the new restored version almost reaches the two-hour mark. In that case, it's not a good thing. The film drags a lot on several occasions and even if Goethe's story of Faus is a truly interesting one that I also enjoyed reading when we did it at school, it's just not enough material for a 120-minute film, at least not in this version. The director was Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, more known as Murnau, who worked on several of the most successful German silent films in the early days of movie-making and was probably second only to Fritz Lang at that point here in Germany. Murnau was a combat pilot in World War I by the way and no less than 6' 11" tall.Anyway, back to this film: The lead actor is a Swede that I have to say I am not familiar with. Jzst like Murnau, he died way too early. Emil Jannings plays the devilish character of Mephisto and he won the very first Academy Award not much later. The lead actress is the pretty (and) young Camilla Horn who enjoyed a prolific movie career in many decades after this one, especially the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. And even if the trio did a decent job with their performances and certainly elevated the material, it is not enough to make up for the flaws of this film. All in all, not recommended.

Murnau's masterpiece captures the Gothic genius of the original folktale—and it is obvious that such a story would never have came from a Latin or even Slavic people—it required the uncanny Gothic genius. In these Germanic peoples the platitude (the banality, the philistinism, the petty bourgeois dullness) and the Gothic coexist.Gretchen is both nice and well played; Murnau's Faust is a creepy metaphysical romance, made with flawless taste and snappy aplomb by the German director. Now Murnau's genuine flair for the Gothic and the weird is obvious—his sets are made out of light and darkness, the Christian element (of rituals, practices, customs) is strongly contrasted with the chaos and delusion brought by Faust's new master.Notice that the protagonist, Doktor Faust, is a scientist—or an alchemist, anyway, not a meta-physician, but rather an enquirer of the nature, like Dr Frankenstein. For the folk, the idea of philosopher is that of a naturalist, of a scientist, even an alchemist or an occults, not of a speculative thinker. Think a little about these: Faust—Marlowe—Goethe—Hegel—Mann—Bulgakov—Frankenstein.

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.

A real miracle that brings this film back to life. 1926 in Germany produced many prodigies. Murnau chose to go back to the old traditional legend, hence to ignore Goethe's double drama and all the subsequent romantic or melodramatic adaptations in the 19th century. He also decided to ignore Marlowe's adaptation from 16th century England. He simplified the traditional tale and only had one simple episode of travelling through time, in this case to some Italian noble beauty that Faust rapes under the influence of some magic. Murnau chose to concentrate on the tale of Gretchen in the second part of the film (which had started with the plague, of course the Black Death) after this Italian trip with elephants and black slaves. He makes it romantic and intense in feeling, though all that feeling is nothing but the result of diabolical magic. Mephistopheles seduces the mother while Faust seduces Gretchen. Mephistopheles also keeps the brother away long enough for Faust to succeed in his seduction. But then Mephistopheles gets on his own route since Faust must be damned for him to recuperate his soul. He gets the brother back to the house in time to find the seducer in his sister's room, but after the mother had found him in the room too and had died of the traumatic shock. Faust kills the brother in the fight that follows. The sister will be then put in the blocks but not executed for fornication. But the winter comes and her baby is born. In the cold and the snow the baby will die of exposure. She will be accused of having killed the baby and then sentenced to burn at the stake. And here Murnau regenerates the tale by making Faust truly in love and coming back to see Gretchen again. He runs in the crowd to be on her passage when she is led to the stake. Mephistopheles makes him old again just when he stands in front of her begging for forgiveness. He is pushed away, unrecognized. She is tied to the stake and set afire. He jumps onto the pyre and into the fire and she sees through his age the young Faust she had been in love with. They die together at the stake. And that brings the final salvation because Faust was not moved by lust only but by real love that made him sacrifice his life, and Gretchen was also moved by love since she was able to recognize the young Faust in the old one, hence to see beyond appearances. The end then is the rejection of Mephistopheles' request to get Faust's soul by God's angel whose wings are wide open in the shape of an enormous heart. Apart from this touching and intense tale, the film is of course marvelously well directed and shot and Murnau chooses too to keep the old framing technique that was natural with the old camera, the picture is systematically fuzzy all around. Today this produces some kind of dreamlike feeling. The music of the DVD is also quite fascinating, in both versions of it, only a harp or a full symphonic orchestra. We must be more than plain grateful when we see all these old films that find a new youth and glory thanks to the DVD.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines