The photo above shows a scene from a movie which was made an entire century ago. And while it’s just a single frame, you can see exactly why it’s still entrancing audiences today.
A wild-haired and heavily bearded man is signing a document with a quill. Beside him, a hooded figure has the countenance of a rogue landlord waiting for you to initial the small print. And in a sense, he is: this is the moment a scholar signs away his soul to the devil.
The image comes from Faust, a 1926 silent movie directed by German director FW Murnau. To mark its centenary this year, MUBI Editions has just published The Faust Bible: The Making of FW Murnau’s Masterpiece, a book built around an archive of photographs that was once assumed to be lost forever.
Latest Videos FromDigital Camera World
These pictures offer a rare glimpse into how filmmakers created nightmares long before most of us were born, with nothing in the way of digital tech, but a whole lot of ladders, smoke, fur, papier-mâché and ingenuity taking its place.
Lost and found
This is a book that’s literally 100 years in the making. Once the original film had wrapped, crew members Robert Herlth, Carl Hoffmann and Walter Röhrig assembled a visual diary of around 400 photos and illustrations that documented its creation. They presented it to Murnau as a souvenir before he left Germany for Hollywood.
The album then vanished for decades and was thought to have been destroyed in the Second World War. It eventually resurfaced and was purchased by la Cinémathèque française in Paris in 2017. After a painstakingly restoration, it’s now being published for general consumption for the first time.
These images are eerie and endearing in equal measure. In one, a skeletal rider with flowing white hair sits atop an equally grotesque steed, flanked by a grim-faced man in armour. It would look terrifying, were it not for the presence of stepladders and technicians in work coats assembling the scene.
In another, two men balance on a plank laid between a ladder and a trestle, above the peak of a model mountain, as fake clouds float around them. The artifice is obvious, but you can see how effective and visceral it would have looked in the final film.
Another captures actor Emil Jannings as Mephisto, caught mid-lunge in satin robes, rapier in hand, his make-up drawn into a widow’s peak. Beside him, F.W. Murnau directs the action in a white coat and hat. Theatrical menace on one side, workaday practicality on the other.
One of the most fascinating images shows the filming itself. The director sits beside a hulking wooden camera on a tripod, megaphone in hand, while a colleague bends to peer through the viewfinder. It’s light years away from today’s mirrorless rigs, yet at a basic level, the job of framing a shot and shouting instructions hasn’t changed much at all.
The Faust Bible: The Making of FW Murnau’s Masterpiece is published by MUBI Editions, priced $100 / £75, and available from mubieditions.com and bookshops worldwide. Faust (1926) is now streaming on MUBI, with live-scored screenings at the Filmmuseum München on October 25 and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles on November 1.
