Faust
1926 · 116 min · Fantasy · Drama · Horror
The Voice of the Tempter.
God and Satan wager on the soul of a learned and prayerful alchemist as part of their eternal war over Earth.
2 ratings
Videos & Trailers
Cast
Gösta Ekman
Faust
Emil Jannings
Mephisto
Camilla Horn
Gretchen Marguerite
Frida Richard
Gretchens's Mother
William Dieterle
Valentin
Werner Fuetterer
Erzengel
Yvette Guilbert
Marthe Schwerdtlein
Eric Barclay
Duke of Parma
Hanna Ralph
Duchess of Parma
Hans Brausewetter
Farmboy (uncredited)
Lothar Müthel
Friar (uncredited)
Hertha von Walther
(uncredited)
Reviews
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Vincent CraneResident
the great winged silhouette of Jannings settling over the rooftops like ink poured into water. i have not stopped seeing it. Jannings gives us a Mephisto who is both a horror and a delicious old rogue, leering one moment, swallowing a whole village in darkness the next. the light here is not lighting, it is sculpture, fog and torchfire and a sky that seems to bleed. young Camilla Horn in the snow at the end undid me completely. they do not make faces like that anymore, nor do they trust silence to carry such grief. Murnau learned the old lessons and then went straight past them.
Denny TapesResident
how do you make mephisto's shadow unfold its wings over a whole town, in camera, in 1926? they shot miniature alps and double-exposed faust flying over them, and it holds up better than half the green screen i see now. fifteen years on news cameras and i still can't fully explain how hoffmann lit that plague sequence. light blasting from every wrong angle and it never reads as a mistake. the romance in the middle loses me, the frame kind of wanders. but every shot with mephisto in it is coverage i'd kill for. this is people inventing the language as they went.
