Faust (1926)

Several weeks back, TCM's selection for Silent Sunday Nights was F.W. Murnau's 1926 version of Faust.

The basic story is one that's probably well known, although there are a bunch of variations on it because it's been done by various writers and composers across a couple of centuries and several European countries. Murnau being German, his version draws most heavily from Goethe's novel, although there are apparently differences between the two too. Fundamentally, God and Satan are fighting for the soul of the Earth, and eventually they decide to settle things with a wager for the soul of one man, whom Satan offers all sorts of good things in exchange for his soul.

Faust (Gösta Ekman) is an alchemist working in Anytown, Germany (or the German land since Goethe's story was written before the unification). After an archangel representing God makes the wager with Mephisto (Emil Jannings), Mephisto visits a plage on Faust's town that he is unable to stop, so Mephisto makes that offer for the power to stop it and one day of his wishes in exchange for a chance at the soul. If, after the day runs out, Faust wishes to keep having that power, Mephisto gets his soul.

During that day, the elderly Faust gets to be young again, and meets an Italian duchess with whom he falls in love. But just as he's about to make the relationship with the Duchess permanent, whoops! -- that day runs out. If he wants to keep it up, Mephisto is going to get his soul.

Faust does in fact make the agreement, but decides that Italy isn't what he wants, so he gets sent back to Germany, which is where he meets the lovely and virginal Gretchen (Camilla Horn). He falls in love with her, and she could fall in love with him, not realizing that Satan is going to have a hold on her too if she does have a relationship with Faust. Gretchen's brother Valentin (William Dieterle, who would eventually leave Germany and become a director in Hollywood) senses that something is up and tries to stop the Faust/Gretchen relationship from going forward.

Faust and Valentin eventually duel, with Faust winning, and Valentin blames Gretchen for this, which is going to bring her to justice. And that's the least of her problems. Faust had knocked her up, and nobody in town wants her around, so what are she and her child going to do?

Apparently, various versions of the Faust story have had different endings; I haven't read enough of them or seen the operas to know which is which. That's also part of why I'm not going to mention the end of this one; well that and not wanting to give away spoilers. As for this version, it's visually very stylish, which is to be expected from Murnau and German expressionism. The story is good, although the Faust/Gretchen half does drag at times.

One thing that was of particular interest to me since German is my second language was the intertitles, which were apparently the subject of a conflict between a couple of famous German writers of the day. The print TCM ran kept Murnau's original intertitles, which are mostly in the old German Fraktur, with one putting "Mephisto" in the more modern (or non-Germanic) Latin typefaces (technically called Antiqua) we see today. I can read Fraktur, but can't process it quite as quickly as I can Antiqua. It was also a bit more of a challenge for me in that being based on an old story, there's rather more old-fashioned German, which is definitely not my strong point. But most people are going to be reading the English translation of the intertitles at the bottom of the screen anyway.

I can definitely recommend Murnau's Faust, which you can find on DVD.