FW Murnau, widely regarded as one of cinema’s greatest silent film directors, created Faust 100 years ago as an adaptation of Goethe’s tragedy about a scholar who sells his soul to the devil. The film starred Swedish actor Gösta Ekman as Faust and German star Emil Jannings as Mephistopheles. Though initially a commercial failure, Faust is now recognized as a masterpiece and has been the subject of scholarly study, including a doctoral dissertation by French New Wave director Éric Rohmer.
Murnau was known for his secretive approach to filmmaking and his devotion to visual composition. He restricted access to his sets and production materials, banning producers and executives from observing his work. This mystique generated ongoing questions about the collaborative nature of his films’ creation. Faust was the director’s final German production before moving to Hollywood and represented the most expensive and complex project ever undertaken by the Ufa studio at the time.
A newly published work titled The Faust Bible: The Making of FW Murnau’s Masterpiece sheds light on production methods through previously unseen materials. The book functions as both a modern document and a facsimile of an artifact created during filming—an actual prop Bible that appeared in the film. Art directors Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig transformed this leather-bound volume into a scrapbook by affixing sketches, stills, and behind-the-scenes photographs to its pages as a gift for Murnau.
The Bible’s survival through the decades involved considerable fortune. Murnau left it behind in Berlin when emigrating to Hollywood and never returned to retrieve it. After his death, the book disappeared into storage and was presumed lost for years. It eventually resurfaced in the 1960s when a German curator discovered it among purchased photo albums. The volume subsequently passed through multiple hands before arriving at the Cinémathèque Française in 2017, where it now resides following restoration.
The book’s contents reveal the technical and artistic processes behind Faust’s visual achievements. Sketches appear opposite corresponding film stills, demonstrating how designers and cinematographer Carl Hoffmann translated planned compositions into on-screen imagery. Murnau required his designers to render not only architectural spaces but also actors’ positions, creating quasi-storyboard designs that functioned as contracts for execution. The director worked extensively with lighting adjustments to achieve the film’s characteristic velvety shadows, employing an innovative camera technique called entfesselte Kamera that facilitated dynamic movement through carefully constructed sets.
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