It’s Zeughauskino time again. After seeing “Tui Na” early in the morning, I spent the rest of the day at home and only went out to see “Faust” and the shorts from the Retrospective section at 7pm and 10pm respectively. Besides waking up way to early, that actually made my day quite pleasant with reasonably little stress. Shocking!
Faust. Eine deutsche Volkssage
Germany 1926, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 108’
In order to save people from dying from the pest, the old professor Faust makes a deal with the devil. But after the devil turns him into a young man, he discovers his libido and seduces rich women. One day, he falls in love with Gretchen, your generic innocent, pious country girl, which he pursues and subsequently impregnates. Gretchen gives birth to a baby who freezes to death, after which she is condemned to die, and it is only then that Faust realizes what he has done.
Death count: 4.
I have to confess something here: It’s been 10 years since I read Goethe’s “Faust I” (I never finished “Faust II”), on which the film is based on, and I must have forgotten large parts of it. Back, the story in Goethe’s “Faust” seemed meaningful to me and I thought touched upon existential questions, but it seems that I barely remembered what happened. I used to really like Gretchen’s character, the way she spoke to Faust and I thought her love for him had something exemplary, almost allegorical. When I saw the film, however, most of the storyline drawn from Goethe’s “Faust” seemed almost dumb to me. It almost made no sense to me how obsessed Faust was with his youth when he started out as the wise professor, and I don’t know why I had the impression that Faust was dealing with an existential problem when he’s just acting upon his lust for Gretchen. Even in Gounod’s “Faust” version, Faust and Marguerite’s love made more sense to me. Perhaps this is all due to the fact that this is a silent film without all that much dialogue. When you don’t know what actually goes on in Faust’s mind, not only does it seem unbelievable how he turns from good old professor to delinquent youngster, but Faust and Gretchen’s relationship also get reduced to something very physical and superficial looking.
With that said, I especially hated the way that baby died, incidentally a deviation from Goethe’s “Faust” in which she drowns her baby on purpose. For Goethe, Gretchen actually becomes crazy and actively kills the child; in Murnau’s version, she is a terribly pitiful person who begs people to save her dying baby and then hallucinates in an long, drawn-out tearjerking scene. Ugh.
Apart from that, Murnau’s directing is so incredibly awesome. I loved the first part of the film to pieces, essentially everything before Faust meets Gretchen. Much like in “Der letzte Mann”, the dark atmosphere in this first part is splendid, and I strongly doubt there are many directors out there who can use images in such an intense way as Murnau does. Just for those images, it was worth seeing this film, and it perfectly makes sense to me why “Faust” is perceived as a classic.