Some notes on Murnau's "Faust" I've seen for the second time. I know
at least two people here (Peter Henne, Noel Vera) share my love for
the film; they have also put it in their best of all times list.


FIRST THIRTY MINUTES:

"Faust" is one of my ten favorite films but I must admit I was not
enjoying the first half hour as much as the rest. Except: The very
beginning with the abstract lights; and the shadow-play when Faust is
up against a wall, suffering. Things change when he is in the 'desert'
to meet Mephistopheles, and Mephistopheles appears on the different
parts of the frame, doing the same gesture with his hand (taking off
his hat). It is nothing less than visual music, the repetition of a
gesture has never been this poetic in cinema. Everything after that is
perfect. And I could be wrong about the first half hour..


INTERTITLES:

The abstract paintings of the intertitles. They keep changing, not
really commenting on the narrative, except maybe in very subtle ways.
They are all very beautiful, which is why it would kill the film to
change them with English ones. Every time I concentrated myself on
reading the English subtitles (instead of the German intertitles
above) I felt I lost the rhythm of the film.

The still tableaus of intertitles vs. the moving images, both
flickering, so both in the same nature, but they contradict.

The intertitle before "LOVE" is the longest one (in number of words),
it stands like a column, or at least a structure, which gives weight
to the idea of love.


TOWN:

The recurrent shot in front of Gretchen's house. Maybe I should draw
it but: there is a foreground with Gretchen's window on the left, and
a background with the expressionistic houses. These are not on the
same height, in fact, Gretchen's house is higher than other buildings
in the background. The great part is that there are stairs between the
foreground and background but we don't really see them. We just see
people disappearing or appearing in the middle of the frame between
the foreground and the background because they walk down/up the
stairs.


GRETCHEN:

Gretchen's house. A bit like Vermeer's spiritual paintings, she
represents more than a woman, an ideal. The simplicity of the
furniture, and the white walls that are given a lot of space in the
frame so that white light can take over.

The Norton Edition of Goethe's "Faust", translated by Walter Arndt,
ends with the following lines: "The Eternal-Feminine / Draws us on
high."
One of Murnau's greatest achievements is to draw the same parallel
between the ideal represented by Gretchen, and the Eternal.


PLOT COMMENTS:

People in the audience laughed when they saw the word "LOVE" on the
screen. I guess they considered it cheesy. Well, it is cheesy if you
don't put it in the context of the whole film. "Love" that Murnau is
talking about is not love in the narrow sense of the word we use
everyday. Faust realizes more than his love for Gretchen at the end,
he realizes an approach to the universe that includes accepting it,
being one with it. It is important to note that Faust first agrees to
the pact with the Devil because he wants to help the sick town people.
His intentions are great but what he does is going against nature
(using the supernatural means not accepting the natural) and that
non-ability to be one with nature, with its goods and bads is his
biggest mistake. Everything goes downhill from there (repeat:
intentions were good).

On the other hand, Gretchen has the simplest of lives, pure. It's true
her brother is a very superficial guy, it's true she is shy, but she
has accepted life as it is. Until Faust comes along. Because Gretchen
represents more than a woman, she is the "eternal, ideal, love,
oneness", the destruction of her happiness can be seen as a metaphor
of what happens in Faust's psyche.

Just like "Sunrise", there is a lengthy episode of unhappiness, as if
everything is coming to a tragic end. It goes on for so long that it
does not really matter whether there is redemption. What use is
happiness when the opposite can be so real and so destructive?

I love the parallel: Gretchen with her child freezing / Sculpture of
Mary with Jesus (both have been left without the "fathers")

Yoel