My first silent film lasted over two hours. Dialog full of screens after everything's been said. To be honest, I was surprised at how there was never a point of down, there was never a realization that I was watching a silent film, though it did take a bit of getting used to in the beginning. Some might get pushed away due to the fact that the screen transfer isn't great, or that the music has been recently dubbed, but I found it all to fit perfectly. The acting in this film is more than over expectation, that made me believe in the story from start to finish. By the end I had a new found admiration for the makers of movies from our past, and what standards they can set for movies now.

Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with horror milestones from the silent era. Some of them I rate as downright brilliant and are listed high in my favorites of all times ("The Phantom Carriage", "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari") but quite often I also literally have to struggle to stay awake throughout these so-called indestructible masterpieces. Murnau's "Faust" is definitely unique, because I experienced these two opposite sentiments during one film! The opening sequences are breathtaking. Unbelievably and utterly breathtaking, in fact. There's the grim prologue that covers a showdown between the archangel and Satan, with horrid images of the four horsemen and brimstone storms, and subsequently the temptation of the titular character (who sells his soul to Mephistopheles in return for youth), which is nothing short of jaw-dropping! What comes next is truly one of the most genius moments in cinema, namely the evil Mephistopheles towering over a little town and symbolically unleashing a plague on it. I think I must have re-watched that particular 7 or 8 times, simple because it's so stunning. But then something strange and incomprehensible happened. The rest of the film suddenly became tedious, prosaic and unremarkable. The content of young Faust wooing the beautiful Gretchen, while Mephistopheles distracts her deeply religious mother, is honestly rather dull and uninteresting. All the mind-blowing aspects of the opening sequences, such as the special effects and the camerawork of Carl Hoffman, are pushed to the background in favor of the mediocre romance plot. The finale finds Murnau returning to great shape, but the powerful impact of the first 15-20 minutes cannot be reached again.

FAUST (1926) is another absolute classic of German silent cinema from F. W. Murnau, the man behind NOSFERATU. This is by far the best screen adaptation of the Goethe novel I've seen, as well as being the greatest 'selling your soul to the devil' storyline tale put on screen. It doesn't feel slow or creaky like many of the old silents, in fact it feels much like a modern Hollywood blockbuster, effects-fuelled and lavish to look at. The imagery is frequently stunning, it just looks that good. Despite a near two hour running time the story just flies along with regular bursts of truly creepy special effects; the early scenes with hellish figures hurtling through the air are, for me, more frightening than anything else cinema would throw at us for the next half-century. The channel 'Lumiere Factory' has this for free up on Youtube and the quality is excellent, so I thoroughly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet.