When
Wed 16 Nov 2022
Murnau’s brilliantly baroque, monumental and atmospheric retelling of the eponymous fable – combining Goethe, Marlowe and various German folk tales – features iconic expressionist stars Emil Jannings as Mephisto and Gösta Ekman as the famous pact-maker willing to sell his soul. This lavish studio concoction – UFA’s most expensive film prior to Metropolis the following year – is a highwater mark in production design and Murnau’s last German feature before heading to America. With Wilhelm Dieterle.
Also screening on Wed 16 November
Program
The Brink of Life: F.W. Murnau, Cinematic Visionary
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) – Wed 9 Nov, 7pm
The Last Laugh (1924) – Wed 9 Nov, 8.50pm
Nosferatu (1922) – Wed 16 Nov, 7pm
Faust (1926) – Wed 16 Nov, 8.25pm
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) – Wed 23 Nov, 7pm
The Haunted Castle (1921) – Wed 23 Nov, 8.40pm
The Grand Duke's Finances (1924) – Wed 23 Nov, 9.50pm
About the program
The Brink of Life: F.W. Murnau, Cinematic Visionary
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888–1931) was a perfectionist, an aesthete and, in many ways, a visionary, whose poetic, painterly, literate and highly cinematic sensibilities brought to the golden age of German cinema new concepts of film form based on a synthesis of all the elements then in vogue – from Caligari-like horrors to an expressionist use of actors’ bodies through to a rugged, sometimes optimistic naturalism (especially in his American period).
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
