| Faust | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | F.W. Murnau |
| Produced by | Erich Pommer |
| Written by | Hans Kyser |
| Starring | Gösta Ekman Emil Jannings Camilla Horn Wilhelm Dieterle Frida Richard Yvette Guilbert |
| Music by | William Axt (US, uncredited) |
| Cinematography | Carl Hoffman |
| Distributed by | UFA |
| Release date(s) | 14 September 1926 (Austria) 5 December 1926 (US) |
| Running time | 106 minutes |
| Country | Weimar Republic |
| Language | Silent film German intertitles |
| Budget | 2 million marks |
Faust (German: Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage) is a silent film produced in 1926 by UFA, directed by F.W. Murnau, starring Gösta Ekman as Faust, Emil Jannings as Mephisto, Camilla Horn as Gretchen/Marguerite, Frida Richard as her mother, Wilhelm Dieterle as her brother and Yvette Guilbert as Marthe Schwerdtlein, her aunt. Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version. UFA wanted Ludwig Berger to direct Faust, as Murnau was engaged with Variety; Murnau pressured the producer and, backed by Jannings, eventually persuaded Erich Pommer to let him direct the movie.
Faust was Murnau's last German movie, and directly afterward he moved to the US under contract to William Fox to direct Sunrise (1927); when the film premiered in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo of Berlin, Murnau was already shooting in Hollywood.
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The demon Mephisto has a bet with an Archangel that he can corrupt a righteous man's soul and destroy in him what is divine. If he succeeds, the Devil will win dominion over earth.
The Devil delivers a plague to the village where Faust, an elderly alchemist, lives. Though he prays to stop the death and starvation, nothing happens. Faust then makes a trial, 24-hour bargain with the Devil. Faust will have Mephisto's service till the sand runs out in an hourglass, at which time the Devil will rescind the pact. At first, Faust uses his new power to help the people of the village, but they shun him when they find out that he cannot face a cross.
Later, Faust makes a further deal with Satan, who gives Faust back his youth and offers him earthly pleasures and a kingdom, in return for his immortal soul. Mephisto then takes him to the Walpurgisnacht celebration on "Bald Mountain", to finish his tryst with an Italian Duchess. Faust seals the deal permanently; he is Mephisto's forever. Faust soon grows weary of debauchery and yearns for "Home". Here Faust falls in love with an innocent girl, Gretchen, but he is later framed for the murder of her brother by Satan and must flee (with Satan's encouragement). The girl has a child (by Faust) but is cast out into a blizzard where the child dies, and she is sent to the stake as a murderess. Faust sees what is happening and demands Satan take him there. Faust arrives just as the fire has been started to burn his lover. Faust wishes he had never asked to have his youth back and runs through the assembled mob towards Gretchen; Mephisto gleefully grants Faust his wish and it is as an old man that Faust throws himself onto the fire to be with his beloved.
Gretchen recognizes Faust and sees him in her heart as a young man again as the fire consumes them together. The angel reveals to Mephisto that he has lost the bet because love has triumphed over all.
Murnau's Faust was the most complex and expensive production undertaken by UFA. Filming took six months and a cost of 2 million marks (only half was recovered at the box office), until it was surpassed by Metropolis the following year. According to film historians Faust seriously impacted studio shooting and special effects techniques. Murnau uses two cameras, both filming multiple shots; many scenes were filmed time and again. As an example, a short sequence of the contract being written on parchment in fire took an entire day to film.
There were several versions created of Faust, several of them prepared by Murnau himself. The versions are quite different from one another. Some scenes have variants on pace, others have actors with different costumes and some use different camera angles. For example, a scene with a bear was shot with both a person in costume and an actual bear. In some versions, the bear simply stands there. In one version, it actually strikes an actor.
Overall, five versions of Faust are known to exist out of the over thirty copies found across the globe: a German original version (of which the only surviving copy is in the Danish Film Institute), a French version, a late German version which exists in two copies, a bilingual version for Europe prepared by UFA, and a version prepared by Murnau himself for MGM and the US market (July 1926).
The copy of the original German version lacks a number of scenes. With the copies available, a 106-minute reconstructed version has gotten released by Kino International with English subtitles on DVD. A commentary is also an optional extra on the DVD. The original intertitles have also been recovered.
The US version includes titles and scenes filmed especially by Murnau, where for example the scene in which Aunt Marthe offers Mephisto a drink that he rejects as causing heartburn: in the US version, Mephisto rejects the drink for having had alcohol, a joke aimed at the Prohibition era; again in the US version, Mephisto offers Marta a necklace, from the Great Khan of the Tartars, rather than the cousin from Lombardy, as Murnau believed the US audience would not have heard of Lombardy. One scene was done with a text juxtaposition, as again, Murnau believed the American audience wouldn't grasp the imagery by itself. This is also the only version having the originally conceived finale of the ascension of Faust and Gretchen into Heaven. In all others, the scene is rather more conceptual. Books appearing in the film were labeled or any plans with text were shot twice, in German and in English.
The bilingual version was prepared to be shown aboard trans-Atlantic ships traveling from Hamburg to New York. Therefore, they catered to both American and German audiences.
The French version is generally believed to represent the poorest choice of scenes, both including the largest number of filming errors (e.g., showing assistants holding doors, actors slipping, Gretchen stepping on her dress, show the stage maquette). It does hold takes that do not exist in any other versions, however.
The "Bald Mountain" scene served as the inspiration for the "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence in Walt Disney's 1940 animated film Fantasia.
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