Wednesday,
November 7 at 7pm
Faust
with Live Score by The Willem Breuker Kollektief
dir.
FW Murnau, Germany, 1926, DVD, 115 mins, b/w, silent w/ English
and German intertitles
Co-presented
by uwishunu.com
 Faust
stars the inimitable
Emil Jannings as Mephistopheles, to whom the hapless and aging
Faust sells his soul for renewed youth as well as wealth and
power. Based on Goethe's interpretation of the age old legend,
Murnau merely uses the
story as a starting point for an incredibly phantasmagoric vision
of the struggle between good and evil. Beginning with a flourish,
Murnau introduces Mephistopheles with one of the most famous
sequences in film history, finding Jannings being birthed as
a disgusting, primordial creature from the heavens and banished
to the netherworld. Baroque, bizarre, and unforgettable, Faust
is one of the German master's greatest triumphs.
 In
2003, the Cite de la Musique commissioned Willem Breuker to
compose new music for FW Murnau’s Faust, one of the
great landmarks of expressionist silent film. Breuker’s score
follows the images and
the
unfolding story very closely. His wide-ranging musical idiom
adds an extra dimension to Murnau’s masterpiece.
Please
Note: In the Faust score composed by Willem
Breuker, the soprano saxophone part is being played by Frans
Vermeerssen. On doctor's orders, Willem Breuker will not be
part of the Kollektief ensemble at tonight's performance.
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