Mubi Monday: Faust (1926)

It's time. 100 years have passed, and I decided against selling my soul in exchange for avoiding having to write this review. Everyone knows the idea of Faust, even if they don't realise it. Faustian pacts have become more and more commonplace, in both fiction and reality (apparently), and we can only hope that some who have sold their souls for power, money, and much more, are coming to the time when their payment is due.

Directed by F. W. Murnau (delivering audiences an achievement that would arguably be surpassed by Fritz Lang one year later, helming the incredible Metropolis), Faust is an impressive production that shows viewers the classic tale of the titular character (Gösta Ekman) being offered a deal by Mephisto (Emil Jannings) that could lead to him getting everything he wants, which includes the lovely Gretchen (Camilla Horn). It could also lead to him having much more to lose though.

Another film that would make a nice introductory work for those wary of diving into silent cinema, Faust somehow manages to keep everything simple enough, yet explores the central idea in a way that nicely fills out the 107-minute runtime. The intertitles, written first by Hans Kyser and then rewritten by Gerhart Hauptmann, set the tone and clearly underline the main characters about to play their parts in this dark fable.

Ekman is very good in the main role, although many of the scenes show how his choice reverberates through the lives of those around him, and Horn is a believably sweet and lovely Gretchen. Jannings steals the show though, of course, as the dastardly Mephisto. He's the villain of the piece, but also just the one character very much aware of the fallibility of humans. Werner Fuetterer has to stay resolute and optimistic as the archangel banking on humans actually being good and worthy of their existence, a job he does very well, and Frida Richard, Yvette Guilbert, and William Dieterle play relatives of Gretchen, and all throw various spanners in the works. 

I could recommend other interpretations of this tale, from the traditional to the modernised and redressed, but I certainly believe that everyone should make time for this version, at least once. It's an enduring classic, despite the technological progress made throughout the last century that helps to make it seem much more crude and stilted, and you could do a lot worse than fill up a dark winter evening with the likes of this, Nosferatu, and Haxan.

8/10

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