Underplayed Gems

Faust (1926)

Faust poster
Original title
Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage
Directed by
F. W. Murnau
Genre
drama film, fantasy film, silent film
Country
Weimar Republic, Germany
Runtime
1h 46m
Rated
NR
Rating
7.9 of 10 from 398 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

Faust makes a pact with the devil Mephisto exchanging his soul for power and youth. This silent film follows his moral downfall and the suffering it brings to an innocent woman named Gretchen.

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What happens

Faust – A German Folktale (German: Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage) is a 1926 silent fantasy film, produced by Ufa, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Gösta Ekman as Faust, Emil Jannings as Mephisto, Camilla Horn as Gretchen/Marguerite, Frida Richard as her mother, Wilhelm Dieterle as her brother, and Yvette Guilbert as Marthe Schwerdtlein, her aunt. Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic 1808 version. Ufa wanted Ludwig Berger to direct Faust, as Murnau was engaged with Variety; Murnau pressured the producer and, backed by Jannings, eventually persuaded Erich Pommer to let him direct the film. Faust was Murnau's last German film, and directly afterward he moved to the United States under contract to William Fox to direct Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927); when the film premiered in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Murnau was already shooting in Hollywood. Faust has been praised for its special effects and is regarded as an example of German expressionist film. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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