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Faust

Play trailer Faust Released Apr 7, 1995 1h 30m Drama Animation Play Trailer Watchlist
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73% Tomatometer 11 Reviews 90% Popcornmeter 2,500+ Ratings
A deal with the devil turns a man into a marionette in a live-action/animated version of the classic tale.

Critics Reviews

View All (11) Critics Reviews
Philip Strick Sight & Sound Svankmajer finally renders their quest so inconsequential, deflecting himself time and again into other rituals and amusements. Feb 6, 2020 Full Review Detroit Free Press Rated: 3/4 Apr 23, 2005 Full Review Marc Savlov Austin Chronicle Rated: 4.5/5 Jan 1, 2000 Full Review Dennis Harvey 48 Hills It's a witty, eccentric delight, with the director's trademark mix of the droll and macabre on full display. Sep 26, 2020 Full Review Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Rated: 3/5 Jun 29, 2005 Full Review Jake Euker F5 (Wichita, KS) Marvelous grown-up animation with a grubby surrealist sensibility. The best screen treatment of this material to date. Rated: 5/5 Jul 8, 2004 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (144) audience reviews
Audience Member A better integration. Saying a man is determined "by the stars, by our genes, by our repressed feelings, by society, its education, advertising – repression of all kinds", is saying that everything else is determined. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Audience Member Love this movie. I always watch 'Tetsuo' back to back with this (as that's how I used to have it recorded on VHS off the TV). Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Audience Member Very cool animations and gigantic wooden puppets. The plot itself is relatively slow and hard to follow due to its surreal and metaphoric qualities, but you get the overall concept. However you walk away with some pretty amazing visuals and surreal imagery. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Uma releitura surrealista de Fausto. Pessoas viram marionetes e marionetes viram pessoas. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/15/23 Full Review Audience Member A complete surprise to first-time Svankmajer moviewatchers, a good relief to Svankmajer followers since his short-film days in the 60s, and an undecipherable enigma of sensory overload to those familiar only with Goethe's play, this completely free adaptation challenges mainstream moviewatching standards and refuses to be conventional. If there is something valuable about the style of the renowned Czech artist is his visual composition. The editing is merciless. The shots change every second. Close-ups emphasize the unimaginable details, including those of the human body. Everything becomes alive, even the "most inert" objects, if we could assign degrees to the state of inertia. Secondly, we have Svankmajer's consistent quality throughout the decades even if he keeps delivering exactly the same style with hundreds of different stories to tell. Aggressive, graphic, hyperactive... that's his animation style. Thirdly, this is his first feature-length effort to combine clay animation and stop-motion techniques with live action, but definitely the thousandth time he has done so considering his short-film body of work. This is not unknown territory to him. One of the greatest freedoms cinema gives you is artistic vision, assuming an idealistic world free of financial pressures, censorship and interests of studios. He is one of the most important examples in the industry. He envisions stories in a way few would... Actually, I'll take that back. He envisions stories in a way only he would, because if every person tried once in a while to exploit his/her imagination, I am pretty sure that equally fascinating stories could come out of it. However, it was a bold move to set the story in contemporary Prague, making the whole scenario to seem more tangible and menacing, like if it could assault you any day after leaving home. There is no need to talk about the story, but about a term I use a lot in bizarre cinema, and that is "passive viewing". Did that term already exist when I made it up? I don't know, and I haven't bothered to check, but "passive viewing" is watching a film from a purely subjective and artistic point of view without the need to consciously rationalize all received stimuli. The heart interprets what the mind cannot, and the mind is tranquil knowing that dissecting particular pieces of art are sometimes not its task, but that of the heart. Although not my favorite feature-length movie by this great poet, it is probably his most literarily ambitious, impactfully poetic and unexpectedly humorous, even if it questionably ridiculed the tragic tone of the original story, making the ending seem like an uninterested joke. Still, this remains as my third favorite cinematic adaptation of Goethe's immortal piece of literature. 85/100 Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member Un espectáculo especial y único en su especie Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Faust

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Cast & Crew

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Movie Info

Synopsis A deal with the devil turns a man into a marionette in a live-action/animated version of the classic tale.
Director
Ernst Gossner, Jan Svankmajer
Producer
Jaromír Kallista
Screenwriter
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Christopher Marlowe, Jan Svankmajer
Distributor
Kino International Corp., Zeitgeist Films
Production Co
Lumen Films, Pandora Cinema, Centre National de la Cinematographie, BBC
Genre
Drama, Animation
Original Language
Czech
Release Date (Theaters)
Apr 7, 1995, Wide
Runtime
1h 30m
Sound Mix
Stereo, Dolby