American Director Edwin S. Porter was definitely the best mind working for Thomas Edison's film studio and, along with French director Georges Méliès, one of the two most important pioneers of early cinema. The artistic competition between Porter and Méliès resulted in both of them creating and improving the language of cinema as a storytelling art, and the development of special effects in what now would be called as "camera tricks". Like most of his early films, "Faust and Marguerite" (actually his third movie), is a film devised to showcase one of those newly discovered camera tricks. Sadly, this film still shows Porter mastering the trick and lacks the high quality of his two follow-ups to this movie ("The Mystic Swing" and "Uncle Josh's Nightmare", done later in that year), resulting in a film that out of its historical importance doesn't have really anything to offer.
The strange plot is really the movie's major problem, as even with a narrated explanation is very hard to follow. The movie begins with Faust and Marguerite in their living room, when suddenly Mephisto appears and offers Faust his sword, asking him to kill Marguerite. Faust refuses to do the evil act and Mephisto decides to kill Marguerite himself, but when Mephisto is going to cut Marguerite's throat with the sword a bizarre series of events occur, with Marguerite transforming into Faust and vice-versa, confusing Mephisto until a priest appears forcing Mephisto to vanish in order to marry Faust and Marguerite. It's actually a plot too complex for the barely 2 minutes runtime of the film.
Like most films of those early days, the whole point of the plot (written by Porter) is to showcase the camera trick as main attraction. The use of the familiar figures of Mephisto, Faust and Marguerite allows to have the trick centered around a "plot", but Porter fails to make the story interesting or even understandable and the movie ends up as another gimmicky film (Méliès was doing better things by those years). People interested in the film as a representation of Faust will find themselves disappointed, as the movie only uses the characters without having any real relation to the classic story.
Now, the film obviously shows Porter at an early stage, still learning the tricks that would make him a legend with "The Great Train Robbery" (1903). The main camera trick looks very bad, even for its time (as written above, Méliès was doing similar things with much better results), but just by watching his follow-up, "The Mystic Swing", one can see that this movie really helped him to develop his technique. It is also in "The Mystic Swing" where Porter develops more his storytelling skills, as even when that film is also a "gimmick driven" movie, it showcases a better constructed story with a more understandable plot. Still, credit must be given to the actors chosen for the roles as they really deliver a great work of pantomime, and do their best to help the audience to understand what is really happening on screen.
"Faust and Marguerite" is not really a good movie, it is in fact really average and poor even for its time; but it's still an interesting movie to watch, as it is one of the earliest film by Porter that have survived until our days. Along with "The Mystic Swing" and "Uncle Josh's Nightmare" one can really see the progression of film in the work of one of its most important pioneers. It is not the work of a master, but one can see that the autodidact mechanic turned filmmaker was on the right track while discovering the many secrets of film-making. 4/10