silver nitrate notes

Murnau's Faust and the Sky as Architecture

21 aug 2009

F.W. Murnau directed Faust (1926) at UFA the year before he left for America to make Sunrise. It was his last German film, and the largest production of his career to that point. The cinematographer was Carl Hoffmann (1881-1947), who had photographed Lang's Dr. Mabuse and Die Nibelungen. What Hoffmann and Murnau achieved on Faust is the apotheosis of the German cinema's expressive use of model work, miniatures, and atmospheric exteriors.

The film is Goethe in compressed form. The aged scholar Faust signs his soul over to Mephisto in exchange for youth. He ruins the young woman Gretchen. He repents. The plot is pretext for the visual machinery.

The famous opening sequence shows Mephisto looming over a small medieval town, his black cloak filling the frame. The cloak was painted glass; the town was a miniature; Mephisto's face was a separate plate, all married in camera. The shot took weeks to prepare. The result, on screen, is one of the largest single images in silent cinema. The town is dwarfed by the figure that has come to make a deal for its souls.

Faust's ride through the air with Mephisto is the other set piece. Hoffmann photographed Emil Jannings's Mephisto and Gösta Ekman's Faust in front of a moving cloud-painting that was projected from behind the actors onto a translucent screen. The figures appear to fly through clouds while clouds move beneath them. The technique is essentially identical to what we now call rear projection. It was new when Hoffmann did it.

Murnau left for Hollywood the year Faust was released. UFA had given him Faust as a kind of triumph and as a kind of farewell. Hoffmann stayed in Germany and worked through the sound era. Faust is the high point of his career.

[ « prev: The Kid · next: Stagecoach » ]

» leave a comment in the guestbook

sources
[1] Eisner, Lotte. Murnau. University of California Press, 1973.
[2] Eisner, Lotte. The Haunted Screen. University of California Press, 1969.
[3] Brennicke, Ilona and Joe Hembus. Klassiker des deutschen Stummfilms 1910-1930. Goldmann, 1983.
[4] F.W. Murnau-Stiftung restoration notes, 2006.