Faust (1926)
Mephisto wagers an archangel that he can corrupt the pious alchemist Faust, tempting the despairing old man with youth and power in exchange for his soul, a bargain that draws the innocent Gretchen into ruin and forces a final, fatal choice.
F. W. Murnau followed Nosferatu with an even more technically audacious production, and Faust’s in-camera trickery — the giant, wing-spread Mephisto looming over a miniature village, effects achieved without optical printing — still astonishes as pure silent-era craft, whatever one makes of its softened, redemptive ending.
Background
Faust was Murnau’s last German film before he went to Hollywood to make Sunrise. It was produced by the UFA studio and shot on huge sets at Babelsberg, and it draws on both Goethe’s play and the older legend. Gösta Ekman plays Faust, Emil Jannings is a gleeful Mephisto and Camilla Horn is Gretchen. The film exists in several different versions, so what you see depends on the restoration.
What to watch for
The effects are the reason to watch. Murnau used forced perspective, smoke, miniatures and clever lighting to make Mephisto’s cloak spread over an entire town and to send the devil’s ride across the sky. Look at the opening, in which Mephisto and an archangel bargain over Faust’s soul; the light and the scale of the sets make it feel like a painting come to life. The sentimental ending is a matter of taste, but the craft on show in nearly every scene is exceptional even for a great decade of German cinema.
