Amazon.com video review:
F.W. Murnau's last German production before leaving for Hollywood is a
visually dazzling take on the Faust myth. Pushing the resources of the grand old
German studio UFA to the limits, Murnau creates an epic vision of good versus
evil as devil Emil Jannings tempts an idealistic aging scholar with youth,
power, and romance. The handsome but wan Swedish actor Gosta Ekman plays the
made-over Faust as a perfectly shallow scoundrel drunk with youth, and the
lovely Camilla Horn (in a part written for Lillian Gish) is the young virgin
courted, then cast aside, by Faust. The drama falters in the middle with a
tedious courtship and bizarre comic interludes, but the delirious images of the
opening (Jannings enveloping a mountain town in his dark cloak of evil) and the
high melodrama of the climax (Horn desperately clutching her baby while
crawling, abandoned and lost, through a snowstorm) triumphs over such
shortcomings. The sheer scale of Murnau's epic and the magnificent play of
light, shadow, and mist on his exquisitely designed sets makes this one of the
most cinematically ambitious, visually breathtaking, and beautiful classics of
the silent era. --Sean Axmaker
