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Faust

Original title: Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage
  • 1926
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 47m
IMDb RATING
8.1/10
16K
YOUR RATING
F.W. Murnau, Gösta Ekman, Yvette Guilbert, Gerhart Hauptmann, Camilla Horn, Emil Jannings, and Hans Kyser in Faust (1926)
DramaFantasyHorror

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.

  • Director
    • F.W. Murnau
  • Writers
    • Gerhart Hauptmann
    • Hans Kyser
    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • Stars
    • Gösta Ekman
    • Emil Jannings
    • Camilla Horn
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    8.1/10
    16K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • F.W. Murnau
    • Writers
      • Gerhart Hauptmann
      • Hans Kyser
      • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    • Stars
      • Gösta Ekman
      • Emil Jannings
      • Camilla Horn
    • 74User reviews
    • 57Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
  • Photos69

    Emil Jannings in Faust (1926)
    Yvette Guilbert and Emil Jannings in Faust (1926)
    Yvette Guilbert and Emil Jannings in Faust (1926)
    Gösta Ekman and Camilla Horn in Faust (1926)
    Gösta Ekman in Faust (1926)
    F.W. Murnau and Gösta Ekman in Faust (1926)
    Gösta Ekman in Faust (1926)
    F.W. Murnau and Emil Jannings in Faust (1926)
    Faust (1926)
    Faust (1926)
    Gösta Ekman in Faust (1926)
    Faust (1926)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Gösta Ekman
    Gösta Ekman
    • Faust
    • (as Gösta Ekmann)
    Emil Jannings
    Emil Jannings
    • Mephisto
    Camilla Horn
    Camilla Horn
    • Gretchen
    Frida Richard
    • Mutter
    • (as Frieda Richard)
    William Dieterle
    William Dieterle
    • Valentin
    • (as Wilhelm Dieterle)
    Yvette Guilbert
    Yvette Guilbert
    • Marthe
    Eric Barclay
    Eric Barclay
    • Herzog
    • (as Eric Barcley)
    Hanna Ralph
    Hanna Ralph
    • Herzogin
    Werner Fuetterer
    Werner Fuetterer
    • Erzengel
    Hans Brausewetter
    Hans Brausewetter
    • Farmboy
    • (uncredited)
    Lothar Müthel
    • Friar
    • (uncredited)
    Hans Rameau
      Hertha von Walther
        Emmy Wyda
        Emmy Wyda
          • Director
            • F.W. Murnau
          • Writers
            • Gerhart Hauptmann(titles)
            • Hans Kyser(titles)
            • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe(play "Faust")
          • All cast & crew
          • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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          Storyline

          Edit

          Did you know

          Edit
          • Trivia
            Due 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.
          • Quotes

            Erzengel: [Last lines] The word that rings joyfully throughout creation, the word that alleviates every pain and sorrow, the word that absolves all the guilt of humanity, the eternal word. Dost thou not know it?

            Mephisto: What is the word?

            Erzengel: Love

          • Alternate versions
            There 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).
          • Connections
            Edited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (1994)

          User reviews74

          Review
          Review
          Featured review
          "A wager: I will wrest Faust's soul away from God"
          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.
          helpful•21
          2
          • chaos-rampant
          • Feb 18, 2009

          Details

          Edit
          • Release date
            • December 6, 1926 (United States)
          • Country of origin
            • Germany
          • Languages
            • German
            • English
          • Also known as
            • Fausto
          • Filming locations
            • Ufa-Atelier, Berlin-Tempelhof, Berlin, Germany
          • Production company
            • Universum Film (UFA)
          • See more company credits at IMDbPro

          Technical specs

          Edit
          • Runtime
            1 hour 47 minutes
          • Sound mix
            • Silent
          • Aspect ratio
            • 1.33 : 1

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          F.W. Murnau, Gösta Ekman, Yvette Guilbert, Gerhart Hauptmann, Camilla Horn, Emil Jannings, and Hans Kyser in Faust (1926)
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