Episode 15 of Season 2! Host, Gratton Conwill and special guest, Matt Fields discuss Faust (1926).
Day 15
Faust 1h 56m
Released on October 14th of 1926 in Berlin, Faust was a German silent fantasy horror film directed by F.W. Murnau, of Nosferatu fame, and written by Hans Kyser. Based on a fairytale, this film was the first cinematic adaptation of the Faust story.
Faust was an expensive production for its time, this is because Director F.W. Murnau’s previous film was such a success, he was granted an unlimited budget for his next project. It briefly held the record for most expensive German film ever made until the title was taken by Metropolis the following year. While it seems absurd by today’s standards, the studio actually decided they disliked the “script” by Hans Kyser after the movie was shot. However, there wasn’t really a script since the film was silent. What the studio disliked were the intertitles edited throughout the film. Writer Gerhart Hauptmann was hired to make new intertitles, essentially rewriting the movie. When Hauptmann was finished, the studio decided they disliked the new titles even more than the ones by Kyser, so Kyser’s titles ended up in the final cut.
Speaking of final cuts, several cuts of Faust exist today, including a U.S. version prepared by F.W. Murnau himself, and a bilingual version intended to play on transatlantic boats for international audiences. The version we watched today was a reconstruction prepared by Kino International.
Upon release, Faust only managed to make back half of its budget. Like many movies we’ve reviewed this year, Faust is part of the public domain, giving most interested viewers a chance to watch the movie and appreciate it in the modern age. Since its release, it has been reevaluated and is praised as extremely influential and many consider it to be one of the most visually impressive expressionist movies ever made. Some notable fans of Faust are Japanese director Shinji Aoyama and the late film critic Roger Ebert.
Today Faust has:
4.1/5 on Letterboxd
8.1/10 on IMDb
94% on rotten tomatoes
91% on google
8.7 average CTS score
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