This Movie Is a Real Bargain... with SATAN!!!

Yes, it's that time of year again: gift-getting time! Will Santa bring you that video game console you're hoping for? Or is this finally the year when Satan will give you eternal life and help you take over the world?

Perhaps in honor of this wonderful time of year, the International House has quite a treat for us tonight: not only are they screening famous German filmmaker F.W. Murnau's silent film Faust (adapted from Goethe's interpretation of the age-old legend), The Willem Breuker Kollektief will be providing live musical accompaniment with a score that they were commissioned to create for the film by the Cite de la Musique in 2003. (Sadly, Willem Breuker won't be playing himself - doctor's orders - but we're sure his replacement on soprano saxophone - Frans Vermeerssen - will do a perfectly satisfactory job.)

The story, if you don't know, is about a guy named Dr. Faust who - interested in gaining wealth, power, and renewed youth - makes a little deal with a fellow named Mephistopheles. Inevitably, things don't turn out exactly the way he wanted. Mephistopheles is played by Emil Jannings, who also starred in Murnau's The Last Laugh as the porter and, perhaps even more famously, in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel as the hapless professor who is seduced and destroyed by Marlene Dietrich. Besides The Last Laugh, Murnau also directed Sunrise and the fantastic 1922 version of Nosferatu (which was almost lost to us forever due to the fact that it was an unauthorized adaptation of Stoker's Dracula). Apparently Murnau takes an interesting angle on the Faust story, using it mostly "as a starting point for an incredibly phantasmagoric vision of the struggle between good and evil." This from the I-House synopsis, which also describes the film as "baroque, bizarre, and unforgettable" and "one of the German master's greatest triumphs." All of which explains why we're so excited about attending this event tonight.

Faust with Live Score by The Willem Breuker Kollektief
The International House (3701 Chestnut St.)
Tonight, 11/7/07, 7PM
$12 members, $14 general admission
Get tickets online, at 866.468.7619, or at the box office an hour before showtime

Image Credit: Flickr user access.denied