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Overview

Classic story and classic movie. This story has been redone multiple times - I mean, who doesn't like movies with the devil - but this definitely the one to watch. It has fantastic effects for a silent film.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016847

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust

https://facebook.com/HorrorLasagna

https://www.youtube.com/@horrorlasagna

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Transcript

Side Dish 12 - Faust

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Stephen: Are we ready for "Faust"?

Rhys: Indeed

Stephen: Okay. So with a na- name like "Faust," it's obviously a German film.

Rhys: It's true. The actual Faust was a Germanic Renaissance alchemist/con man. He wasn't looked upon favorably in his community.

Stephen: It comes across in the movie

Rhys: But the funny thing is he died in the 16th century, and by the end of the 16th century, Marlowe in England wrote the first written version of Faust.

So it's a Germanic character probably best known f- by being written by an English guy. However, a German rewrote it in the early 18th or early 1800s, and that's what especially Germanic audiences are looking for. They're not looking for Marlowe's British interpretation. They wanna see the German one, so

Stephen: Yeah the Brits had some rough times. They got some dark stuff that goes on. Even Dickens has whole book of, h- ghost stories that people compiled,

Rhys: For sure

Stephen: I did appreciate that it turned into a comedy by the end. Lucifer and that old lady are just freaking hilarious, running around like that.

It made me chuckle

Rhys: Now this is an odd piece for me because, Lucifer and Mephisto originally were two different people but they're both played by Emil Jannings. He was a Swiss actor. So in the movie, they seem to be all in one, or I- it's really hard for me to tell. And they're list- it's, he's listed as Mephisto,

Stephen: Yes.

Rhys: no point in time do they call him Satan or anything else really

Stephen: But he played it well. He was almost that das- Dudley dastardly thief. Yes. That's he looked like that quite often. It was very funny. I, and like you said, it's funny in parts maybe now, maybe back then they thought every bit of it was scary and intense.

Rhys: Yeah it's hard to say. It was directed by F.W. Murnau, who did Nosferatu

Stephen: yeah, we've talked about him at multiple things for that. I can see why this movie, and he is a acclaimed director by lots of Hollywood directors. "Oh yeah, I watch Roman Allen, that set me on the road," type thing. I can see that in this movie a lot

Rhys: He did a total of 21 pieces including Tartuffe, which is another piece of clat- classical literature from the 15th century. He did that just before this one. I can't remember the name of the movie he did right before he did Faust, but that's what earned him enough credit to get Faust made.

It was the most expensive film made in German history at that time. It cost two million marks to get it done. And then the next year, Fritz Lang did Metropolis, which blew it out of the water as far as

Stephen: big name, yeah. And I can see, for the time period the, Satan and Mephisto and the angel and everything looked fantastic. The on- and they really came out hu- they looked huge. They port- they looked very kaiju-like

Rhys: Oh, where you've got Satan over the city, like his wing making this shadow over the whole city? That was, it was a terrifying, terrifying concept

Stephen: Yeah. But the the story, is so common in our culture. I've seen it in every TV show that lasted more than two years. They have an episode like that. Even "Stargate" had the episode of tempting everything you ever wanted in life. Yeah,

Rhys: this was the last film he made in Germany. After that, after he did Faust, he moved to the States. And he died in '31. He wasn't that old. He died in, from a car accident

Stephen: Wow. And then nobody filmed it? Sorry, bad, really dark joke there

Rhys: Fritz Lang actually did the eulogy at his funeral. And then interestingly enough, his his-- it's not funny. His tomb was broken into, and his skull is missing now. And there was evidence of wax in a circle around, like somebody had performed some sort of ceremony using the skull of F.W.

Murnau and then took the skull with them, and who knows where it's at.

Stephen: why has that not been a story or a movie? I'm, you're, we're laughing. It's very dark co- mortuary humor. But again, it's not somebody that was just recent. This is 100 years ago. Doesn't make it any better, but a little… But why has that not been a story?

We've got Algernon what's his face? And some of these guys that we have so many stories about them that would that just… Okay, I guess we need to write a story. That'll be the horror lasagna story we'll make. We'll make a student film

Rhys: Except we're not students

Stephen: No, but we'll, we'll give the students the rights and money

Rhys: There you go. Yeah. Th- it took him six months to shoot, and it cost so much. And one of the reasons it cost so much is that he shot everything with two cameras. And I don't mean he did a two-camera shoot. He just rolled two cameras constantly so that he would co- have choices to go through and pick from for angles and things like that, which was not really-- Typically people would script all that out.

"We're gonna cut from this angle to a face on, and then this." But he just was like, "Just roll 'em," the whole time. And this isn't digital, this is actual celluloid, so Yep.

Stephen: Somebody was spinning that by hand at that time. Yeah. It's like the Shadow of the Vampire when they're showing that and he's, constantly filming everything 'cause he wasn't sure. I know, understand that's a made up about what happened, but

Rhys: But it, like that snow scene, that was all s- that was all salt.

Stephen: Wow

Rhys: C-,

Stephen: I hope they had some pretzels ready

Rhys: And Camilla Horn, like the, the-- she played Gretchen. Like she had rashes from all the salt. That wind-- that snow scene took an entire day's worth of shooting.

Stephen: Oh, jeez

Rhys: She had marks on her h- hands from being bound all the time and stuff like that through this movie. It was not a pleasant experience for her.

Stephen: Wow

Rhys: And she wasn't even his first pick. For Gretchen, he wanted Lillian Gish, who we talked about when we did "The Wind." Oh, which… Yeah, when we did "The Wind,"

Stephen: Yeah

Rhys: Because she was in the original. She starred in the original. But Lillian Gish wouldn't come along unless she could bring her favorite cinematographer, and Murnau was not having that, so he did not hire her.

So while he was shooting "Tartuffe," Lil Dagover is in that, who was in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." And there's like this sexy scene with her leg that was too immodest for her. So Camilla Horn was her stand-in for her leg, and that's how she got this job for "Faust" because he had directed them both. And I was just like, "Wow, that's crazy." In the script even, like the-- he had-- they shot the entire thing, then the studio looked at it and didn't like it. It wasn't close enough to Goethe's original writings, so they had someone else rewrite the entire script. Then they looked at it and said, "Nah, we like the first one better."

So yeah, it cost two million marks, but they were just throwing money everywhere with this project

Stephen: Wow. It should. I can see why it's a, top named movie of the past and people remember it and it, but it's crazy. Again, where's our more… I think there was a more recent version of this filmed

Rhys: Oh, there's about six or seven of them throughout history. There's, It's a notorious comic, I think it's by Rebel, called Faust's Love Story of the Damned or something like that. It's certainly a mature-rated, X-rated comic book. Somebody actually did a make- a remake of that, I think in the '90s.

They, like-- And yes, Faust, like the name Faust is on there, and there is a Faustian bargain, but that's where the line stops

Stephen: so I was really wondering where the fiddle was when they were doing their contest to figure it out. But I must say, the whole crossroads thing I… That comes up in our culture in so much. Supernatural had that all the time, and several other shows. But it really, I think this portrays the angels like dicks as much as Satan and Mephisto, because they're toying with the people in the world.

"Oh, go ahead. You proved to us. Torture them all you want, and we'll show you how wrong you are."

Rhys: Yeah. We're gonna bet for the souls of all of humanity that this one guy's not gonna crumble.

Stephen: Yeah.

Rhys: take that bet

Stephen: And then they welch on it anyways "Oh, they said love. Ha, we ban it all. We got you." The world's dying from the plague, and they're like fighting with each other, but hey, we won. A- and in a way, they talk about physics, how our physics of our world is different when you get down to quantum level.

Physics acts different. But they're noticing it also acts different when you go big, like between galaxies and stuff. So this is like that. The dealings, the life of these gods, these beings, is totally different than what we get on Earth. So we're-- honestly, we're not that big a deal to them.

Whatever. There's more that, where those came from

Rhys: Another name, John Barrymore, was supposed to be Faust originally.

Stephen: okay.

Rhys: But instead it was played by Gösta Ekman, who was a Swedish actor at the time. And he changed his name because originally his last name sounded too Jewish to be going into Germany to film a-- So he changed his last name to something far more acceptable, I guess

Stephen: I was gonna say that. That kinda makes sense for that time period. I could agree.

Rhys: Yeah

Stephen: All right. There's Faust. That's a good one. If you like the old black and whites, the old public domain stuff that we've been doing,

Rhys: Oh, sure. And some of the special effects, when you look at this, you're like, "This is 1926?" It's insane what he was able to do

Stephen: Yeah, and the flying with the clouds and, stuff. Yeah the layers of the filming in places

Rhys: Murnau had been a World War I pilot, and so he was really trying to capture that feeling of being… those were the open canopied planes, right? He was trying to capture that feeling as he did those scenes, and I think he did a great job 'cause they even have this kind of edge of vertigo to it, where you get a little dizzy just watching it.

Stephen: Yeah.

Rhys: Yeah

Stephen: Speaking of, before we sign off, I've found "The Golem." There was a modern remake, not a direct remake, but based on the same type of concept it- from 2019. I was gonna check that out, see what it looked like compared to what that original one was. Or that was actually the third one in the series, but like the only one that's totally

Rhys: survived? Yeah

Stephen: Yeah. So I was gonna check that out. I was like, "Oh, cool, a remake." 'Cause w- it's-- we were saying, "Why didn't anyone remake this?" See what it looks like

Rhys: What do we got coming up next on The Side

Stephen: have coming up next, and I actually looked it up this time we have the 1910 Frankenstein,

Rhys: Ooh

Stephen: not even the first Frankenstein. There, Edison did a Frankenstein before that, but none of the wax cylinders have survived and it hasn't been transferred that anybody knows of.

Rhys: Yeah. Edison had done Faust too

Stephen: Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah.

Rhys: Before this one

Stephen: he did quite a few things that I don't think as, are as publicly known, but

Rhys: he bought a lot of things as opposed to… It's not like he was out there making movies

Stephen: No, not he helped them come about, let's say it that

way. But yeah, Frankenstein's next. And we've got some good ones still coming up. I'm about to start adding to the list as we get through this here. Find some other new ones, all right there's Faust.

Rhys: Cool.

Stephen: Catch you later, man.

Rhys: See ya

Stephen: Oh, and for everyone listening, we do have the Sinister Horror Fest coming up, which I'll talk a bit more about, but then we're gonna have our Horrorthon coming up, and we have those picked out this year.

So it looks like an

Rhys: That's right.

Stephen: again. So there's our s- our little plug for people to hang on. Subscribe and like. All right, man, later.

Rhys: See ya.

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