Faust

A wager between heaven and hell sets the story in motion: the archangel and the devil disagree over whether a single righteous scholar can be turned away from God, and the fate of the Earth hangs on the outcome. Their subject is Faust, an ageing alchemist whose learning and piety are beyond question. When plague descends on his town and his knowledge proves powerless to stop it, he turns to dark forces for help. Mephisto appears and offers him a bargain; the two eventually encounter Gretchen, and the arrangement takes a tragic turn.

F. W. Murnau directed this German silent film, which sits between his Nosferatu and The Last Laugh of the early 1920s and his later American work, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and City Girl. Hans Kyser wrote the screenplay, Erich Pommer produced, and the cast includes Gösta Ekman in the title role, Emil Jannings as Mephisto, Camilla Horn as Gretchen, William Dieterle as Valentin and Werner Fuetterer as the archangel.

Drawn from the long-standing Faust legend, the film was made in Germany by UFA together with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and runs 116 minutes. Audiences remember it fondly: it holds 8.1/10 on IMDb across roughly 18,000 votes and 7.9/10 on TMDB, while a critics' rating of 9.1/10 places professional assessments well above the general viewer scores.