Boring

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Blistering performances.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

"Faust et Méphistophélès" is a French film from 1903, so this one will have its 115th(!) anniversary already next year, which of course means it is a black-and-white silent movie. The director is Alice Guy, who was around the age of 30 back then, but still far from a rookie. Here we have her take on the famous Goethe novel and as I realize that as someone with close to zero interest in literature. The action looks like stage performance recorded by Guy and honestly from what we see, it also could have been by Méliès. The problem is that this was doomed from the beginning as it is of course impossible to fit this tale into 100 seconds. It's certainly nowhere near Guy's best efforts and it's really only worth seeing for big Faust fans for curiosity reasons as they should not expect a lot here. The medium film wasn't ready for the material yet at this point, that much is safe. A thumbs-up for Guy being brave enough to try, but a thumbs-down for the film. Don't watch.

Because of the use of stop-motion as a form of trick film making, this film is very reminiscent of the films of Georges Méliès--though it lacks the artistic touches that a Méliès film usually has. Instead, it comes off as a bit frenetic.Alice Guy has managed to tell, in a thoroughly confusing manner, the entire story of Faust in about two minutes!!! I laugh at this because the original story consisted of 25,000 lines of non-rhyming German verse. How anyone expected to adequately address this complex story so quickly is beyond me. To try, Guy often stops the camera to make things seem to magically appear. However, unless you are very familiar with the original story, the whole thing is a confusing nightmare--and it STILL wasn't easy for me to follow even though I had read this dreadfully dull story.Not bad for 1903, but a confusing film nonetheless.

How Monsieur Takes His Bath (1903) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Faust and Mephistopheles (1903)** 1/2 (out of 4)These two films from Alice Guy feature her obviously trying to capture the joy and spirit of a George Melies film but neither one really lives up to being anything overly special. HOW MONSIEUR TAKES HIS BATH is one big gimmick as a man keeps trying to take his clothes off for a bath but each time he gets a piece off another takes its place. This here is actually a remake of a 1900 Melies film called GOING TO BED UNDER DIFFICULTIES, which featured a man trying to get his clothes off to go to bed but having them replaced by more clothes. This Guy film really doesn't capture any of the spirit of that Melies film, which in my opinion is one of his best. This film contains a few nice effects but there's just no heart or soul in anything we see so you'd have to ask yourself why would you bother when you could simply watch the Melies film. FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES is yet another version of the Faust story with this time it being told in the same fashion of Melies as the man signs the contract and soon Faust has various demons taking shape. This short is decent but once again you really have to wonder why you'd spend time with it considering Melies was doing the same time of work and making the films much more enjoyable. The effects here are fairly good but the overall feel of the film just can't compare to that other French master.

I suppose you need to know the story of Faust to understand what's going on in this busy French film from female pioneer Alice Guy. My recollection of the tale is sketchy to say the least, despite seeing the silent German version a few years back. A doctor and a pact with the devil, I seem to remember. This is reminiscent of Melies - with whom Guy was no doubt attempting to compete with - because of its use of trick photography. To be honest, the only trick in Guy's bag is stop-motion and she uses it with abandon - I lost count of the number of times a character changes appearance following a tap on the head. The film's in fairly good condition, so it's easy to see what's going on even if it's not too easy to understand.