Film Forum

(1926, F.W. Murnau) Mephistopheles (Emil Jannings, surprisingly restrained as the demon) spreads his cloak, enveloping a town, and plague spreads across the land; the alchemist Faust then makes his fatal Pact. Murnau’s treatment of the classic legend is perhaps his most dazzlingly pictorial work. DCP restoration courtesy F. W. Murnau Stiftung. Approx. 105 min.

Reviews

“The opening and first thirty minutes are the most triumphantly visual of all silent movies.”
– David Shipman

“A great fresco painted with lights and shadows… Never before or since was there such an exultant flight of the cinema spirit.”
– Herman G. Weinberg, Cinemages (1/1, 1955)

“One of the most pictorially beautiful films ever made, a supreme example of German studio craftsmanship, at times seeming like a Dürer or a Breughel come to life.”
– Theodore Huff

“Murnau put into effect his total mastery of cinematic space… No other cinematic work has left so little to chance.”
– Eric Rohmer

“…the most remarkable and poignant images the German chiaroscuro ever created. The chaotic density of the opening shots, the light dawning in the mists, the rays beaming through the opaque air, and the visual fatigue which diapasons around the heavens, are breathtaking.”
– Lotte Eisner