IMDb RATING
8.1/10
17K
YOUR RATING
The demon Mephisto wagers with God that he can corrupt a mortal man's soul.The demon Mephisto wagers with God that he can corrupt a mortal man's soul.The demon Mephisto wagers with God that he can corrupt a mortal man's soul.
- Awards
- 3 wins
Gösta Ekman
- Faust
- (as Gösta Ekmann)
Frida Richard
- Mutter
- (as Frieda Richard)
William Dieterle
- Valentin
- (as Wilhelm Dieterle)
Eric Barclay
- Herzog
- (as Eric Barcley)
Hans Brausewetter
- Farmboy
- (uncredited)
Lothar Müthel
- Friar
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDue to the success of F.W. Murnau's previous film, The Last Laugh (1924), the studio promised him an unlimited budget with which to make this film.
- Alternate versionsThere 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).
- ConnectionsEdited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (1994)
Featured review
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.
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.
- chaos-rampant
- Feb 17, 2009
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Details
- Runtime1 hour 47 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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