HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 31
Six decades: 2nd of 2 films from the 1920's

I'm not a complete newbie to the discovery of great films from the silent era. I've even forayed further afield than Metropolis and Nosferatu. But I was NOT ready for this utterly overwhelming cinematic experience. I was completely blown away by Faust.

I don't know how much of the nearly two-hour runtime I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open like some recently over-Demerolled Chronic. From the moment that truly awesome version of Satan was thrown up in front of me, this film threw an unceasing procession of mind-boggling images at me. I lost count of the still frames I wanted to enlarge and hang in my house (not sure where... maybe my dream home can include a very large dungeon-themed guest bathroom?) Just.... fuck. This review is going to be difficult, because I'm not sure I can even describe the effect this film had on me, because it was so visceral and immediate and so much down to Murnau's visual choices. I mean, OK, his choices, but how did he even come up with the base idea of some of these shots?

I know now that the way Murnau plied his craft in the era of silent film-making was perhaps something that would never survive the transition to talkies. Even thinking of the great film-makers of the age besides himself, it seems pretty clear that most silent film-making relied on static shots, because the technology of the day wouldn't tolerate moving cameras. So, what is noticeable in more fantastical special effects driven films like this one is a feeling of diorama. Each scene is like peering into another fantastically detailed and imaginative diorama, just with moving figures somehow transplanted into them. And I'd like to think that this is exactly what it felt like to the audiences of the day, who must have had to compare film to some other pre-existing art form because it was too new for each film to yet be accepted as simply another example of something that has been around forever.

In Faust, Murnau's dioramas feel more like peering through a wormhole into some other dimension. They have that static diorama quality, but they feel infinite somehow.

But it's not just the visual artistry. I've been familiar with the tale of Faustus for ages, because obviously I was the kind of kid who'd read up on any kind of horror and demonology books in the school library and the Faustus story is a bit of a chestnut in that sense. So, I wasn't expecting all that much intrigue in what is essentially a pretty simple and rather archaic story concept. But the direction in which Murnau takes this version is fascinating. Heavily melodramatic and tragic in a classic sense, yes - but it's themes move a little beyond the tired old "beware temptation" moral.

Setting the action during the Black Death, and creating Faust's motivation for selling his soul as his quest for a cure for the Plague gives us a compelling reason for him to make such a foolhardy decision, but also implicitly asks the question: why does God put Faust in this position? And yes, I'm very familiar with all the old Christian rationalisations about the free will of man and yada yada yada. But it's the fucking Plague, folks. Its horror was unimaginable. It didn't just kill sinners, it killed fucking anyone it could get its buboes into. If there's ever been a more pressing argument for the non-existence of God, it's the Plague. Well, maybe a toss up between that and Piers Morgan.

But what is most interesting is the nature of the tragedy that ultimately befalls Faust, which is interesting because it doesn't actually befall him at all. It befalls the woman he falls in love with. Now, it's entirely possible that this is just explicable as some kind of casual misogyny on Murnau's part, or of the society he existed in. Maybe it was just seen as more conventional or compelling to inflict trauma on a woman. I know very little about Murnau the man, so I'm not going to claim a philosophical mastery for him (yes, I could have researched this in a matter of minutes, but you should know by now that it's much more my style to spew my half-formed musings on a film onto the screen for half an hour or so and then hit Save). But this seems to me to be an inversion of the old Eve/Pandora/original sin myth - you know, those myths about how all the evils of the world are basically the fault of some woman fucking it all up for everyone forever after because she JUST WOULDN'T LISTEN! Gretchen is an innocent, asking for no trouble at all, entirely happy and in harmony with her provincial existence until Faust shows up and ruins everything to an epic degree. Yes, he tears his hair and gnashes his teeth about it, but he's not the sufferer. I find this interesting - I don't know what it all means, to be honest, but it's interesting.

And then, despite all that, the film manages to end in a way which although arguably a little pathetic for the characters themselves, is intended to be transcendent and, you know what, I think Murnau actually pulls that off.

This film left me reeling such that I was bound to fixate on its sensory effect and deeper themes more than dissect its technical qualities, but all I wanted to add was a note on Emil Jannings' performance as Mephisto. This has to go down as one of the greatest villain performances of all time. He is so uber-expressive - and balances an ability for great comedy with moments of genuinely frightening evil. This is genuine tour de force stuff. All the cast are pretty wonderful (and Camilla Horn as Gretchen is the real emotional core of the film), but Jannings conjured one of the most incredibly heightened performances I've ever seen with this. He's astounding.

I think I'm just going to stop rambling on and on about this film - it's truly wondrous. As usual (and arguably sacrilegiously, but I'd argue the toss as whether any soundtrack for a silent film can be truly "what the director intended"), I created my own soundtrack on the fly for this, which if you are interested, can be found here. Feel free to play at home, kids!