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A landmark of silent-era expressionism: visually overwhelming, spiritually grand, and still startlingly modern in its use of light, shadow, scale, and spectacle. The story can feel uneven or melodramatic, but the imagery and atmosphere make it essential viewing for anyone interested in horror, fantasy, or film… Read more
95% (18,523)
Where to watch: Kino
1926 · 1h 56m · ★ 95% (18.5K)
The Voice of the Tempter.
Director: F. W. Murnau
Starring: Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn
God and Satan wager on the soul of a learned and prayerful alchemist as part of their eternal war over Earth.
F. W. Murnau
UFA, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn, Frida Richard, William Dieterle, Werner Fuetterer, Yvette Guilbert, Eric Barclay, Hanna Ralph, Hans Brausewetter, Lothar Müthel, Hertha von Walther, Hans Rameau, Emmy Wyda
Kino Film Collection
A landmark of silent-era expressionism: visually overwhelming, spiritually grand, and still startlingly modern in its use of light, shadow, scale, and spectacle. The story can feel uneven or melodramatic, but the imagery and atmosphere make it essential viewing for anyone interested in horror, fantasy, or film history.
Faust is one of those films that feels less like a movie than a haunted cathedral of images. Murnau turns the old legend into a collision of apocalypse, romance, and moral allegory, using scale, smoke, shadow, and impossible light to make every frame feel charged with cosmic conflict. Even nearly a century later, the visual invention is astonishing.
The film is not always emotionally smooth, and some viewers will feel the tonal shifts hard: it begins in nightmare, drifts into something more romantic and fable-like, then returns to darkness. But that instability is also part of its strange power. It keeps refusing to settle into one genre, which makes it feel larger than a simple horror classic.
If you come for plot mechanics, you may find it old-fashioned. If you come for atmosphere, composition, and the raw expressive force of silent cinema, it is a masterpiece. This is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand how early film could conjure awe, dread, and pity at the same time.
Neil Bahadur (5★) · 517 likes
Murnau’s most baroque work - an instance of the director working both within maximalism and in examination of maximalism as well. It's opening and closing moments are Murnau at his most melodramatic - but everything in between is him at his most inquisitive. It's constantly stimulating to watch - shards of light blasting in from everywhere possible, constant smog, and some of the most haunting poses and faces in movies. This is what makes this film so interesting - rather
Sethsreviews (4.5★) · 491 likes
Every moment in this film offers some of the most breathtaking shots I've ever seen. The scale and use of light and shadow are simply jaw-dropping throughout, and not just for the time period in which it was released, but for cinematography that would be outstanding now. A narrative that defies all boundaries, a masterwork in merely visual storytelling. This is a true testament to the visual power of film and the value it can deliver. The extent to which
haley (3★) · 491 likes
started out really cool with some extremely nightmarish visuals that i'd expect to see in today's evelvated horror, but about halfway through, it turned into more of a weird romance and that's not what i came here for
noen (2.5★) · 309 likes
There are not many works of silent cinema that have managed to condense, with such visual virulence and symbolic sophistication, the metaphysical dilemmas that underpin the human condition. From the first frames, of liturgical brilliance, the spectator is immersed in a spiritually and visually dense atmosphere that immediately announces a cosmic confrontation: the eternal struggle between good and evil, between spirit and flesh, between fate and free will. The opening, a true cinematographic hierophany, in my opinion, is one of
Timcop (4.5★) · 297 likes
"Don't touch me you whore...your lover has murdered me!" is something I've had to say on more than one occasion, unfortunately.
Another essential Murnau silent with eerie atmosphere, iconic imagery, and expressionist dread.
A foundational expressionist nightmare that pairs well with the film’s stylized moral unease.
For viewers drawn to monumental silent-era imagery, scale, and visionary production design.
A silent masterpiece of spiritual anguish, faces, and transcendent visual intensity.
For more Murnau: lyrical visual storytelling, emotional intensity, and dreamlike imagery.
For the metaphysical side of the story: mortality, faith, and a cosmic struggle with darkness.
A devil’s bargain story with folk-myth energy, moral stakes, and supernatural charm.
deal with the devil, good versus evil, redemption, temptation, mortality, spiritual struggle, expressionism, romantic tragedy
silent film, German expressionism, horror fantasy, mythic drama, visual spectacle, shadow play, moral allegory, supernatural, melodrama, early cinema