Descendants of the Alchemist: International Faust Adaptations in Cinema

Faust ... or: Doctor Faustus, the magician, the alchemist, the scientist – the representation of modern man in folklore, literature and art, the ambitious man who wants to know more, who strives to uncover the secrets of the physical and the metaphysical world, the man who yearns for tasting all pleasures, for gaining all knowledge and for understanding and controlling all levels of existence.
Faust – the man who sacrifices his soul and devotes himself to hell to satisfy his ambitions and reach his goals.
Books, stage plays, operas, novels by Christopher Marlowe, Johann W. Goethe, Christian D. Grabbe, Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, Arrigo Boito, Ferruccio Bussoni, Michail Bulgakow, Thomas Mann …
Faust truly has become a significant symbol for the abilities and the frailties, the restlessness and the contradictions of mankind: an icon of cultural representation, a modern myth. Being such a prominent figure in the cultural history of the modern age, we do not only find him in books or on the stage but also in film. Both literal impersonations of Faust and descendants of the alchemist in disguise bustle in artistic, ambitious film productions and in popular, entertaining movies.
1.
The long series of cinematic adaptations based on the tale of Faust started in the year 1896 with the film version by the French brothers Louis and Auguste Lumicre, the inventors of the cinématographe. In 1897 the English film pioneer George Albert Smith, one of the influential directors of the group later to be known as the Brighton School, made the film Faust and Mephistopheles. In the same year French showman and stage magician Georges Mélics directed his first short film based loosely on the Faust story, Le Cabinet de Méphistophélcs, in which Mélics himself acted as an impish devil playing magic tricks and practical jokes on two knights […]
In 1900 American director Edwin S. Porter made a version of Faust and Marguerite for the Edison Company as well as a second Faust film in 1909, and British producer and director Cecil Hepworth staged his Faust in 1911. In Germany the first Faust film was made in 1910 under the direction of Oskar Meßter, starring Henny Porten as Gretchen and her father Franz Porten as Faust. […]
The history of Faust on screen is indeed as old as the history of film itself and reflects the internationality which is part of the ongoing fascination and significance of this modern myth. […]
About 100 Faust films were made in the era of silent film (and about 100 more after the invention of sound film). Unfortunately, most of the silent films are lost, and we only know about them from contemporary reviews or ads in historical film magazines or from the catalogues of film producers and film distributors. But the sheer number of these film productions suggests that the subject matter of Faust was very suitable for adaptations in the childhood years of the cinema. It provided indeed several characteristics that guaranteed its popularity and its success with both producers and audience in the specific situation of early cinema.
First of all the Faust story was well known to all the European people and well known to all social classes; this is an important fact if one tries to reach and entertain a diverse audience with a medium that is not able yet to tell complex and self-sufficient stories in a convincing and coherent way. The early cinema was experienced as a mere technical apparatus and as a means of creating lifelike moving pictures for their own sake; according to Tom Gunning it was a cinema of attractions and »not dominated by the narrative impulse that later asserted its sway over the medium.« (Gunning 1990, p. 56) […]
Being a story widely known, the tale of Faust could be presented to a huge international audience by just displaying fragmentary, scenic parts and excerpts of that story in a rather primitive narrative context without creating misunderstanding or confusion. All the information necessary to understand the cinematic presentation and to contextualize the visuals was provided by the spectators themselves who were familiar with the characters and the basic plot. Consequently the popularity of the Faust story made its spread in the new medium possible and thus served an economic purpose.
Secondly: A good reason for the filmic aptness of the Faust story was its fantastic elements that could be brought to the screen by the evolving technology of film and the craftsmanship of people like Mélics. These elements of fantasy – devilish apparitions, magical transformations, weird and uncanny situations etc. – satisfied the audience’s appetite for spectacular and fancy images and their demand for screen sensations. Early cinema was a show of visual magic and never before seen attractions, and stories like Faust, of course, were able to provoke cinematographic innovations on the basis of improving technical skills. Thus the artistic and technical challenge for film makers and the public demand for amazing sights on the screen worked together to promote Faust as a favourite subject for film. […]
Finally there is the cultural connotation of the Faust story that made it a success as material for early cinema. All over Europe the Faust theme had generated exceptional and renowned works of art in literature, in music, in drama, in the visual arts. Now the early cinema, struggling for a decent reputation in society and especially in the more educated, bourgeois classes, could use the respectable name of Faust to promote itself. Mainly known as a mere entertaining show for the lower social classes, as an attraction on fairgrounds and in amusement arcades and as a cheap pastime for the working class, the cinema tried at the beginning of the 20th century to attract also a more literate and erudite audience. To legitimate the cultural claim of their medium producers and directors used more and more literary subjects and sources. In order to improve and establish the quality of their films and to make the cinema more attractive and acceptable for the upper classes they brought literature and drama on the screen. In this scheme Faust films seemed to be a clever device, because the Faust story did actually appeal to the lower classes as well as to the upper classes of society, it has the potential for both entertaining spectacular sights and intelligent philosophical content.
In conclusion one can say that the appropriation of Faust offered the early cinema the possibilities to test and develop its own technical capability, to improve the quality of storytelling and narrative content, to raise its cultural reputation and to attract a wide audience in all social classes. Faust proved to be the ideal subject matter for cinema, even by today’s standards.
[…]
The cultural history and tradition of the Faust topic with its evolution from common folk tales and legends to puppet theatre and opera, drama and prose literature, with its shares in tragedy and comedy, high culture and popular culture show its versatileness and variety. Starting in the 16th century as a folk tale with nadve implications and a straightforward morale, it has become a most efficient amalgam of basic ideas about the human condition and a set of typical characters and typical scenes with almost abstract proportions that is capable to reflect any kind of philosophical notion or ideology. Being so popular, well known and well defined on one hand and being so open to variations, different messages and interpretations on the other hand the Faust theme has gained an exceptional status within our culture. These specific characteristics make the flourishing production of Faust stories in different fields of art and on different levels of artistic quality possible, because they allow the realization of various (artistic, social, political) intentions. They make the topic comply with popular forms of storytelling and pure entertainment as well as with philosophical discourses and critical political messages, and thus they enable this modern myth to keep its popularity and its significance and to engender meaningful adaptations both in high culture and in popular culture. The following examples prove the richness of the Faust tradition in international cinema and its importance and effectiveness as part of modern culture.
2.
[…] The most famous Faust adaptation of the era of silent film is Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s film Faust- Eine deutsche Volkssage (Faust – A German Folk Tale), made in 1926.
Murnau is appreciated today as one of the most important and innovative German film directors, and his Faust film is known as a masterpiece of German expressionistic cinema. Produced by the biggest German film company, UFA, the film cost 2 million Reichsmark; that makes Murnau’s Faust together with Fritz Lang’s Nibelungen (1924) and Metropolis (1927) the most expensive and lavish film production in the Weimar Republic. It was a project of national and cultural prestige from the start.
The script written by Hans Kyser – with assistance by Murnau – is based not only on Goethe’s drama (1788/1808) but also on the German Volksbuch Historia von D. Johann Fausten published in 1587, on Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragicall History of D. Faustus (1592) and on an already existing film script called Das verlorene Paradies (The Lost Paradise) written by Ludwig Berger. Murnau himself was fascinated by the subject of Faust because he wanted to display the specific time and setting of the German Middle Ages, »jene Zeit des deutschen Mittelalters, die zu den phantasievollsten, von Geheimnissen und Schatten am meisten durchzuckten Zeitaltern der Menschheit gehört, und die noch niemals im Film entstand.« (Prodolliet 1978, p. 33) With this statement we can clearly see Murnau’s artistic intention, and maybe we are allowed to conclude that for him the drama of Goethe and its philosophical implications were less important; more important for him as film director was the visual recreation of a certain period, the cinematic realization of a specific mood related to his notion of the Middle Ages rooted in the traditions of German romanticism and Gothic horror (Schauerromantik). […]
In 1952 Lotte Eisner praised Murnau as the master of light and shadow in the German cinema of expressionism and his film Faust as a great artistic achievement, a magnificent orchestration of visual magic. (Eisner 1987, p. 295) In 1965 the two French film critics Jean Mitry and Jean Dormachi claimed euphorically that no other film has ever presented a drama of metaphysical meaning in such a brilliant way by using all its graphic resources. (Aumont 1989, p. 65) In 1977 French director Eric Rohmer wrote a detailed analysis of Murnau’s film, in which he used unbridled words of praise to describe Murnau’s artistic use of light and shadow, his original approach to the visual composition of every shot and the masterly construction of an imaginary filmic world unfolding in time and space. In Rohmer’s point of view Murnau’s Faust is nothing less than a masterpiece, a visual symphony that is inspired by great European painters like Altdorfer, Caravaggio and Rembrandt, but nevertheless has its own qualities of beauty, style and narrative power. All shapes and forms, says Rohmer, the features of faces, bodies, objects, landscapes and natural phenomena like snow, light, fire and clouds are presented on screen according to Murnau’s ideas and his knowledge of their visual effectiveness. Nothing is left to coincidence. (Rohmer 1980, p. 10) Light creates and defines all forms in specific ways, and so light is Murnau’s instrument of filmic creation and spatial organisation. It dominates the images, it sets the mood and propels the story.
It is interesting that this film, praised today for its original filmmaking and its visual splendour, was no success in Germany when it was first released. The contemporary audience and critics thought about the film as too heterogeneous, too unbalanced and in some parts as too corny.
[…]
Today we regard Murnau’s Faust film as a major achievement in filmmaking, looking at the specific aesthetics and the quality of visual imagination more than at complexity or unity of content. […]
But nevertheless we still notice the striking distinction between this film and all the subsequent serious adaptations: Murnau’s Faust appears as a hermetically sealed story. There was no attempt made to update the subject, to find some points of contact between the meaningful myth of Faust and the time and social situation in which the film was produced. So the film could only be seen and understood as a kind of medieval fairy-tale, a cinematic flight of fantasy with great special effects, but without any relevant messages to the contemporary audience. […]
This dereliction of a contemporary approach, the missing points of contact to the social reality could be a major reason for the disappointment of the spectators in the Weimar Republic, a period of highly charged political and ideological debate and confrontation, in which serious commentaries on pressing problems and answers to topical questions were very welcome. For a similar reason Fritz Lang’s Metropolis failed a year later, offering but a weak, nadve and implausible solution for the problems of industrialization and class struggle.
3.
In 1949 René Clair made a French film version of the Faust story called La Beauté du Diable (Beauty and the Devil). Michel Simon and Gérard Philipe play both Doctor Faust– before and after his rejuvenation – and Mephisto: As part of their pact they exchange their outer appearance, thus symbolising the affinity, or even the fateful identity of scientific thinking linked to ruthless rationalism and ambition on the one hand and evil on the other hand. Extreme rationalism leads to pure materialism, and materialism ends in nihilism and despair – this lesson of the late age of Enlightenment is demonstrated here under the influence of the devil. And the devil is no ugly, demon-like creature, but has a human face.
Clair and his co-writer Armand Salacrou realized the topicality of the Faust story in the age of tremendous scientific progress and nuclear weapons. The Hiroshima bomb had shown that the abilities of man and his knowledge of the physical world not only were a great achievement and the cause for rejoicing and triumph, but also the immediate source of great danger. In Clair’s film Faust uses his skills and new technologies to invent new weapons, and although the atom bomb is never mentioned explicitly, it is quite obvious in which direction Clair’s interpretation of the Faust story aims. Under the guidance of Mephisto Faust starts to turn into a technocrat and a merciless dictator; in a vision of his own future Faust sees himself as a cruel military leader conquering and finally destroying the world – images in which the recent experience of the world war resonates most impressively. (It is quite interesting and revealing that these scenes of Faust as an inventor of weapons and as a war waging dictator were cut from the film when it was released in Germany in April 1950.)
Fortunately, Clair’s (French) Faust can finally avoid his sinister fate, and it is love of course that saves him and frees him from the devil’s clutches. The glory of romantic love, the simplicity and honesty that constitute the relation between Faust and the gypsy girl Marguerite defy the wicked scheme of Mephisto. The pact is annulled by Marguerite, and the devil must return to hell alone, while Faust keeps his youth and leaves together with his beloved to explore the simple life. The message is clear, maybe even nadve: Since evil is created and fostered by man himself, it can also be defeated by man. Eternal damnation is not unavoidable. Pure love and truthfulness can save us from our darker urges. What makes us human is not the exploration of all possibilities and the unquestioning reinforcement of rationalism but the reliance on sympathetic feelings and emotions and the striving for the realization of our more natural and honest inclinations.
[…]
4.
A very unconventional example for a Faust adaptation is the film Faust (alternative title: Lekce Faust) made by Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer in 1994. Svankmajer transforms elements of Marlow’s Tragicall History of D. Faustus and Goethe’s Faust, Grabbe’s drama Don Juan and Faust (1829) and Gounod’s opera (1869) and combines real live cinematography with animation and puppet scenes to create a weird, sometimes funny, sometimes creepy exploration into a bizarre world of experimental filmmaking.
An ordinary man (Peter Cepek) in contemporary Prague is lured to the backstage of a strange theatre where he puts on a costume and starts to read curiously the drama text by Goethe. Suddenly he finds himself playing the part of Faust – on-stage and off-stage. He is confronted with the forces of evil, black magic and demons out of hell, who appear as wooden marionettes with a frightening life of their own. Tragedy unfolds in this self-referential play with masks, mirrors and marionettes as the man/Faust is drawn deeper and deeper into the vortex of hubris and sin. Finally he dies in a mysterious car accident, while a new Faust is just chosen to repeat this fateful journey to perdition – a true vicious circle.
Svankmajer uses the myth of Faust to invent situations of surrealism and the grotesque, to surprise the audience with his peculiar mixture of filmic styles, and to establish a political subtext about dark forces unremittingly scheming to seduce, corrupt and destroy common citizens. With this he is reflecting in particular the threat of the oppressive structures of Socialism and Stalinism and their inclination to perpetuate despotism, a topic he also deals with in his short film The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (1990), in which he uses surrealistic images to portray the political history of his home country under the spell of Stalin and Soviet power. Although we encounter familiar scenes and words referring to the classical Faust texts the bizarre visuals of the film clearly predominate this presentation of the topic.
5.
A powerful subject matter about aspects and fundamental ethical issues of modern life, the Faust myth has conquered literature and film in various disguises. […]
Cinematic transformations of the Faust theme put the characters of the myth repeatedly in new social or historical contexts, thus creating an illustrious group of descendants of the alchemist.
In 1941, for instance, William Dieterle (= Wilhelm Dieterle, who played Valentin in Murnau’s Faust) directed the film The Devil and Daniel Webster (alternative title: All That Money Can Buy), an adaptation of a story by Stephen Vincent Benét (1937). It is an American Faust version, set in New Hampshire, where the poor farmer Jabez Stone (James Craig) sells his soul to the devil, appearing here as the deceitful Mr. Scratch (Walter Huston), and gains in return material wealth. But of course Stone regrets his pact with the devil after loosing all the love and respect of his wife, his family and his friends. It is the witty lawyer Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold) who finally defends the farmer at an infernal trial and rescues his soul from eternal damnation. In a letter to Agnes E. Meyer (July 16th, 1941) Thomas Mann praised the film as an excellent Americanized fairy-tale, patriotic and fantastic and very well acted. (Mann 1963, p. 202) The film celebrates American values like family life, individual responsibility and democracy and was regarded as a display of the democratic spirit in the process of being tested. At the time of its production this Faust tale rendered the connotation of a call to arms, a political appeal to the USA to join the war against fascist Germany.
Japanese director Akira Kurosawa presented in his film Ikiru (i.e. »Living«), made in 1952, the story of old Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) who is a bureaucrat at the Tokyo city hall and frustrated of his boring and ineffective life. When he learns that he has cancer and just a few months to live he is trying to find the meaning of life and a goal to achieve before it is too late. His search is structured in a way that reminds of Faust’s journey through the world under the guidance of Mephisto. Indeed Watanabe encounters his Mephisto, a novelist (Yunosuke Itô), who introduces the old man to the night clubs of Tokyo, and he encounters his Gretchen, a young woman working in his office (Miki Odagiri), who symbolizes the carefree joy of life. Finally Watanabe finds a worthwhile goal: He works hard within and against bureaucracy to realize the building of a playground for children. He succeeds, his new found idealism defying all obstacles, and so he dies in peace with himself sitting on a swing of the new playground. While the first part of the film, Watanabe’s search for attractions and distractions, is told in a straight and chronological manner, the second part, his efforts to make the construction of the playground come true, is told in retrospect. His colleagues and relatives remember him and his actions from different point of views at his funeral, thus creating a kind of patchwork narration or collection of fragments that resembles in a certain way the specific sequence of just loosely connected scenes in Goethe’s Faust II. (Carr 1996)
To tell this touching story about a man who finds an important task and a final goal in his life, Kurosawa transforms the narrative structures of both parts of Goethe’s drama into a filmic structure, and he uses some elements of the story of Faust to enhance the philosophical significance and meaning of Ikiru. His protagonist Watanabe is just an ordinary man, an unimportant bureaucrat leading a dull life in a cold and indifferent world, far from being an excessive explorer like Faust, but at the end of his life he is able to give a meaning to his existence. The mission he pursues is not a great enterprise that could change history or the fundamental conditions of the bleak society he lives in, but it is a reachable goal with an immediate effect for the children. And by reaching this charitable goal the ordinary man gains the greatness and importance of a character like Faust. In 1986 American director Walter Hill made the film Crossroads, a modern Faust adaptation set in the world of black Soul and Blues music and taking up Thomas Mann’s idea of the ambivalent character of music that serves as the conceptual basis for his novel Doktor Faustus (1947). A young white guitar player (Ralph Macchio) meets an elderly Afro-American Blues musician (Joe Seneca), who once has signed a pact with the devil and is now afraid of loosing his soul to hell. The devil in this film is also Afro-American and introduces himself as Mr. Scratch (Robert Judd), a reference to The Devil and Daniel Webster. But it is the power of music and the unselfish love of the young man to the old man that defy the forces of evil and save the soul in a final showdown and display of musical skills. The metaphysical tale aims at a social message: Salvation comes with the reconciliation of old and young as well as with the reconciliation of black and white; the acknowledgement of the Afro-American contribution to American culture, namely the black roots of popular music, and the crossing of the generation gap turn a hopeless situation into a triumph of the human soul.
In Taylor Hackford’s film The Devil’s Advocate (USA 1997), based on a novel by Andrew Neiderman, the young and ambitious lawyer Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) falls prey to the devil who calls himself John Milton (!) and runs a very successful law firm in New York. The film is about greed and man’s weakness for seduction in a world dominated by glamorous media images and the thirst for fame, popularity and luxury – an only slightly exaggerated portrayal of the legal practice and the business world of the late 20th century and a satire about our epicurean society, in which materialism, ruthlessness and insatiable lust for life culminate in terror and despair.
Al Pacino playing Milton, the contemporary incarnation of the devil, highlights the film with his gnostic address to his Faustian disciple Kevin, in which he introduces himself as the benevolent friend of mankind while God is accused to be a distant and selfish and unjust being. His rhetoric is almost convincing:
“Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He is a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts, he gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does he do? I swear, for his own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag-reel, he sets the rules in opposition. It’s the goof of all time. Look, but don’t touch! Touch, but don’t taste! Taste, don’t swallow! And while you’re jumping from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He’s laughing his sick fucking ass off. He’s a tight-ass, he’s a sadist, he’s an absentee landlord! Worship that? Never! [...] I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted, and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him, in spite of all his imperfections. I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist, maybe the last humanist. Who, in their right mind, Kevin, could possibly deny, the 20th century was entirely mine? All of it, Kevin. All of it! Mine! I’m peaking, Kevin! It’s my time now.” (Cited from the film)
6.
This is just a small selection of films presenting descendants of Faust or featuring elements of the Faust myth. There are indeed whole film genres, in which thematic aspects of the Faust story are used as topoi. […] In the genre of the fantastic film the plot device of the devil’s pact or apparitions of infernal demons are common motifs in the repertoire of horror and eeriness. And in the genre of science fiction we encounter the archetypical character of the mad scientist who denies all moral conventions and crosses all borders in his ambitious search for knowledge and thereby causing more often than not chaos and disaster. Thus he becomes a warning symbol for the dangerous curiosity of modern man and his unlimited urge of expanding research and experience and controlling the universe. These mad scientist characters are true descendants of the ingenious alchemist Faust.
Like the literary tradition the cinematic approach to the subject matter of Faust has extended in the course of time and has absorbed and displayed various levels and directions of meaning and interpretation, thereby serving different artistic intentions: Murnau used Faust as a frame for his dramatic staging of light and shadow and his atmospheric description of the Middle Ages; Clair used it to warn of the dangers of technological progress and to celebrate the power of simple love; Gustav Gründgens (in his 1960 film adaptation of his stage production of Goethe’s Faust) used it to show his acting skills and his passion for drama and theatre; and Svankmajer used the world of Faust as a setting for his surrealist vision of our modern life and political corruption. Because the Faust myth has such a vast scope of meaning and provides both philosophical and anthropological truth, artists in very different social and historical situations were able to adjust their adaptations to their specific needs and thus were able to reflect specific situations and mental states in society by using elements of the Faust story. […]
»Wie machen wir’s? daß alles frisch und neu / Und mit Bedeutung auch gefällig sei«, the director asks in Goethe’s Prologue for the Theatre. (Goethe 1986, p. 536) How can we succeed in offering a new and striking and meaningful play? The cinema has always tried to re-tell old stories in a new and striking way; it may be unable to present the wholeness of the complex modern myth of Faust in one single film, but it has split up this complexity and displayed bits and parts of its profound thematic richness in striking new ways, some of them serious, some of them silly. […]
The tale of Faust with its rich cultural tradition is still an artistic challenge and an encouragement at the same time; it invites film makers time and again to explore the story and its elements with different intentions and to apply new connotations, and thus guaranteeing the continuing presence of Faustas a vital part of our culture and as a signifier of our state of mind. He has fulfilled this role for centuries, and as a man with glorious visions of the future and dangerous ambitions he and his descendants will certainly be our companions throughout the 21st century.

Literature:
Aumont, Jacques: »Mehr Licht!« Zu Murnaus Faust (1926), in: Franz-Josef Albersmeier(ed.): Literaturverfilmungen, Frankfurt a.M. 1989, 59-79.
Carr, Barbara: Goethe and Kurosawa: Faust and the Totality of Human Experience – West and East, in: Literature/Film Quarterly 24 (1996), No. 3, 274-280.
Eisner, Lotte: Die dämonische Leinwand. Frankfurt a.M. 1987.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Faust I, in: Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens (Münchner Ausgabe). Bd. 6.1: Weimarer Klassik 1798-1806, ed. by Victor Lange, München 1986, 535-673.
Gunning, Tom: The Cinema of Attractions. Early Film, its Spectator and the Avant-Garde, in: Thomas Elsaesser (ed.): Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, London 1990, 56-62.
Mann, Erika (ed.): Thomas Mann Briefe 1937-1947, Frankfurt a.M. 1963.
Prodolliet, Ernest: Faust im Kino. Die Geschichte des Faustfilms von den Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart, Freiburg 1978.
Rohmer, Eric: Murnaus Faustfilm. Analyse und szenisches Protokoll, Müchnen/Wien 1980.
Strobel, Ricarda: Der Pakt mit dem Teufel: Faust im Film, in: LiLi. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 17 (1987), H. 66: Faust und Satan – multimedial, ed. by Helmut Kreuzer, 42-60.

Faust in Film (selection):
Faust (France 1896; dir. Georges Hatot; produced by Louis & Auguste Lumicre)
Faust and Mephistopheles (GB 1897; dir. George Albert Smith)
Le Cabinet de Méphistophélcs (France 1897; dir. Georges Mélics)
Damnation de Faust (France 1897; dir. Georges Mélics)
Faust et Marguerite (France 1898; dir. Georges Mélics)
Faust and Marguerite (USA 1900; dir. Edwin S. Porter)
Faust et Méphistophélcs (France 1903; dir. Alice Guy)
Faust aux Enfers, ou la Damnation de Faust (France 1903; dir. Georges Mélics)
Damnation du Docteur Faust, ou Faust et Marguerite (France 1904; dir. Georges Mélics)
Faust (GB 1907; dir. Albert Gilbert)
Faust (USA 1909; dir. Edwin S. Porter)
Faust (Germany 1910; dir. Oskar Meßter)
Faust (France/Italy/GB 1910; dir. Henri Andréani, Enrico Guazzoni, David Barnett)
Faust (GB 1911; dir. Cecil Hepworth)
Der Student von Prag (Germany 1913; dir. Stellan Rye)
Faust (USA 1915, dir. Edward Sloman)
Faust (France 1922; dir. Gérard Bourgeois)
Faust (GB 1923; dir. Bertram Phillips)
La Damnation de Faust (France 1925; dir. Victor Charpentier, Stéphane Passet)
Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage (Germany 1926; dir. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau)
Faust (GB 1927; dir. H. B. Parkinson)
The Devil and Daniel Webster / All That Money Can Buy (USA 1941; dir. William Dieterle)
La Leggenda di Faust (Italy 1948; dir. Carmine Gallone)
La Beauté du Diable (France 1949; dir. René Clair)
Ikiru (Japan 1952; dir. Akira Kurosawa)
Marguerite de la nuit (France/Italy 1955; dir. Claude Autant-Laras)
Faustina (Spain 1958; dir. José Luis Saenz de Heredia)
Faust (Germany 1960; dir. Peter Gorski, Gustav Gründgens)
Faust (USA 1963; dir. Michael Suman)
Faust in secolul dourzeci / Faust XX (Rumania 1966; dir. Ion Popescu-Gopo)
Doctor Faustus (GB 1967; dir. Richard Burton, Nevill Coghill)
Bedazzled (GB 1967; dir. Stanley Donen)
Nach meinem letzten Umzug ... (Germany 1971; dir. Hans J. Syberberg/B. Brecht, 1953)
The Mephisto Waltz (USA 1971; dir. Paul Wendkos)
Majstor i Margareta (Yugoslavia/Italy 1973; dir. Aleksandar Petrovic)
Phantom of the Paradise (USA 1974; dir. Brian de Palma)
Président Faust (France 1974; dir. Jean Kerchbron)
The Forbidden (GB 1978; dir. Clive Barker)
Mephisto (Hungary/Germany 1981; dir. István Szabó)
Faust (Germany 1982; dir. Klaus-Michael Grüber)
Doktor Faustus (Germany 1982; dir. Franz Seitz)
Crossroads (USA 1986; dir. Walter Hill)
Angel Heart (USA 1987; dir. Alan Parker)
Hellraiser (GB 1987; dir. Clive Barker)
Faust – Vom Himmel durch die Welt zur Hölle (Germany 1988; dir. Dieter Dorn)
Faust / Lekce Faust (GB/Czech Republic 1994; dir. Jan Svankmajer)
O Convento (Portugal/France 1995; dir. Manoel de Oliveira)
Faust (Sweden 1996; dir. Eva Bergman)
The Devil’s Advocate (USA 1997; dir. Taylor Hackford)
Faust (Germany 2000; dir. Thomas Grimm, Peter Stein)
Faust – Love of the Damned (USA 2001; dir. Brian Yuzna)
Fausto 5.0 (Spain 2001; dir. Alex Ollé)
666 – Traue keinem, mit dem du schläfst (Germany 2002; dir. Rainer Matsutani)
I Was a Teenage Faust (Canada 2002; dir. Thom Eberhardt)