Silent Film: Faust

Directed by F. W. Murnau
(Germany, 1926, 116 minutes, b/w, silent with musical soundtrack)
Starring Emil Jannings, Gösta Ekman
One of the great achievements of German silent cinema, and replete with astonishing special effects,
this adaptation of Goethe’s Faust features major silent film actor Emil Jannings in a starring role as the devil Mephisto. Writing in The New Yorker, Richard Brody praised Murnau for “an artistic imagination that isn’t merely adaptive but even rivals Goethe’s own.”