1926 Silent Film 'Faust' with Live Organ

A rarely-shown 1926 silent film version of the famous legend of a man’s bargain with the devil, “Faust,” will be screened by the Theatre Organ Society of San Diego (TOSSD) on Saturday, Oct. 28 at 6 p.m. at Trinity Presbyterian Church, 3902 Kenwood Dr, Spring Valley 91977. Music to accompany this heralded example of early horror movies will be played by expert organist Rosemary Bailey on the TOSSD vintage 1927 Wurlitzer organ.

General admission tickets of $20 per person may be purchased at the door or online at www.tossd1.org. The program begins at 6 p.m. preceded by a display of vintage autos at 5 p.m. by the San Diego chapter of the Antique Automobile Club of America.

“Audiences should prepare for more than the usual fun-filled night of music and motion pictures,” says Bailey, who serves as the volunteer president of TOSSD. “This cinematic medieval folktale is still as thought-provoking and unsettling as it was nearly a hundred years ago.”

The Faust Legend: The German literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published two volumes on Faust between 1808 and 1831; the first volume relating the tragedy of Faust’s bargain with the devil has inspired countless other stories, dramatizations, and musical works including two grand operas. Charles Gounod’s opera premiered in Paris in 1859, based on a French play titled "Faust et Marguerite." An earlier opera by German composer Louis Spohr premiered in Prague in 1816; he later reworked it for a London premiere in 1852. Among the classical composers who took up the Faust story were Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, Mahler, and – in 1995 – Randy Newman.

Significance in Silent Film: The Halloween season offers an opportunity to review the evolution of horror films and their effect on audiences. This film, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and produced in Berlin, is among the early landmarks of the horror genre, prior to the development of movie sound tracks in the late 1920s. “Faust” followed Murnau’s 1922 “Nosferatu,” which introduced the legend of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to movie audiences. In this film, Murnau used state-of-the-art special effects inspired by artists from Caravaggio to the German Expressionists. Dramatic lighting, scenes of flying, depth-of-field shots unique in their day, and billows of smoke and flame contribute to the film’s visual excitement. Not only the heavy theme of the Faust legend but also the exhilaration of youth and frantic celebrations in the face of death bring forth the highs and lows of the horror genre. Film critic Roger Ebert praised Murnau’s skills in creating “a landscape of nightmares.”

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