"Faust and Marguerite" is a rather straightforward narrative for Georges Méliès, better known for his wacky trick films and lively féeries (fairy films). Reportedly, Méliès was imitating operatic performances of the Faust legend with this film, especially the work of Charles Gounod. According to John Frazer ("Artificially Arranged Scenes"), Star Film's catalogue advised exhibitors to join "Faust and Marguerite" with Méliès's earlier Faust film "The Damnation of Faust" (1903) and offered a score to be played by an orchestra. Fortunately, on the Flicker Alley DVDs, we also get the narration.
Later the same year, in the United States, Edwin S. Porter produced a similar and longer effort of Richard Wagner's "Parsifal". In other ways, the serious treatment of "Faust and Marguerite" resembles the Film d'Art pictures made a few years later. Like these later films, Méliès was aspiring to imitate the "high art" theatre and opera as opposed to the more comical and childish theatre from which he usually found inspiration. Consequently, we get a boring filmed play, with the static camera framed at the proscenium arch that limits most of Méliès's films, minus the humor and playfulness that otherwise makes them worthwhile.
(Note: The "fragment" available of this film features direct cuts as opposed to the dissolves that Méliès usually used as transitions between scenes.)