Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Faust
1926 · F. W. Murnau · Faust on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how often faces rise out of pure black. (light)
Carl Hoffmann and Murnau build the image from luminous masses against black rather than evenly lighting a scene, so figures seem to surface out of shadow.
Payoff: Light itself becomes a character here, not just something used to see the other characters. In the reading: expressionism. The reading calls this expressionism: light and shadow made into the actual combatants of the story, not mere lighting.
Notice scenes blend into each other instead of cutting hard. (cutting)
Murnau favors dissolves and superimpositions that bind one image into the next, so the film moves as a continuous flow rather than a sequence of separate shots.
Payoff: The picture behaves like one long unfolding image, closer to a moving painting than an edited story.
Watch how low ceilings and huge gables dwarf people. (staging)
Art directors Herlth and Röhrig built sets with forced perspective and oppressive scale, so the human figure looks small against an environment that is either crushing or transcendent.
Payoff: The architecture argues that these people are caught between forces much larger than themselves.
Watch Gösta Ekman play Faust as two different men. (performance)
Ekman shifts between a trembling white-bearded scholar and a smooth young gallant, and the contrast between the two registers is itself part of the story's meaning.
Payoff: One actor's body playing two ages shows you the bargain has changed more than his face.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the light, not the plot. Murnau tells the whole story in black against white.