“He was an original, and no one else ever made films that looked like his. They are strange and haunted; you reflect that if such satanic dealings were possible, they would probably look very much like this.” Roger Ebert on F.W. Murnau and FAUST
One of the most influential horror directors of all time, no one did Gothic folklore better than F.W. Murnau. The director’s final German production before emigrating to Hollywood, FAUST was the most expensive, high-concept Weimar film at the time of its release a century ago. With Emil Jannings portraying Mephisto and Gösta Ekman as Faust–the man who sold his soul to the devil–its unprecedented imagery and grandiose storytelling serve as a highlight of the Expressionist movement and became a cornerstone for folkloric horror on film.
Drawing upon Goethe’s nineteenth-century magnum opus, as well as more ancient myth foretelling of Satan and God’s battle over earth, Murnau’s translation of FAUST flaunts his reveling in the uncanny and the grotesque. Its imagining of Satan, archangels, and demons, conveyed through inventive special effects, held a marked influence on fantasy and horror films to come. With its depiction of the various forms of the dark arts, including necromancy, Murnau’s FAUST deserves to be as celebrated as his previous spooky masterwork, NOSFERATU. Celebrating its centenary, FAUST is the perfect fantasy-horror urtext for the spooky season.
Live accompaniment by Tania Gill
Silent Revue is curated by Alicia Fletcher