The Damnation of Faust (1903) User Reviews

Hitchcoc was right...Méliès loved putting the Devil in his film as well as dancing girls (for no apparent reason)

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 6 September 2020]

I notcied in his review that user Hitchcoc mentions that Georges Méliès sure seemed to love putting Satan into his movies! He also loved putting dancing girls into his films and they'd start dancing for no apparent reason whatsoever! I love the films of this master filmmaker but must admit that he did have a tendency to repeat himself...which isn't surprising since he made over 500 films in only about a decade and a half!

In this film, Faust is taken to Hell by the Devil and Old Scratch takes him on a tour of the place. This is where the dancing girls appear...with ballerinas dancing about as if they are having a recital. It makes no sense at all...and you wonder why all these ballerinas end up in Hell and why they can't help but dance! Following this nonsense, the tour continues and all sorts of things appear and disappear.

In so many ways, this film uses so many techniques and images he used in other films. As a result, it sure felt familiar and dare I say a bit boring. Well made for 1903, but very far from the director's best work.

It Could Have Been Worse/The Could Have Been Insurance Salesmen

[Hitchcoc · 5/10 · 14 November 2017]

As I've said in the past, Melies has this thing for Satan and Hell in general. Poor old Faust made a deal with the devil for his soul. So the day of reckoning comes and he has to pay the piper. One of the devils gives him a tour of his new digs. There are ballerinas left over from the last two features. There are men in white tidies running through flames. More dancing and finally the devil has had enough. A very strange and unsatisfying feature.

Falling through Hell

[Cineanalyst · 16 August 2013]

"The Damnation of Faust" is a relatively weak entry among the story films of Georges Méliès, whose oeuvre includes such early cinema classics as "Bluebeard" (1901), "A Trip to the Moon" (1902), "The Kingdom of the Fairies" (1903) and "The Impossible Voyage" (1904). It does contain one original "trick"--that is, I haven't seen it in any earlier films--but it's a theatrical effect. John Frazer ("Artificially Arranged Scenes") says this was the third of four films Méliès made from the Faust legend. It was also one of many films that Méliès made involving Mephistopheles or another version of the Devil.

There are six scenes, or tableaux, with dissolves transitioning between every scene (per usual of Méliès). Scene three involves removing layers of scenery to reveal the main set, which was a theatrical means to simulate movement that Méliès had become increasingly fond of and used in several of his story films from around this time. The new trick, at least to me, is in scene five when Faust and Mephistopheles fall through a tunnel into the depths of Hell. This tableau was achieved by lowering the hanging actors and raising the wall scenery that occupies the sides of the frame. There's no camera movement or cinematic trickery to it. It's something that can and has been done in live theatre, as well, as opposed to the filmic tricks of substitution splices and multiple exposures that Méliès also relied on throughout his career. As anyone who has seen a few of the cinema magician's other pictures could guess, you should also expect to see a posed theatrical tableau finale and seemingly irrelevant episodes of dancing girls. Yet, "The Damnation of Faust" lacks the comicality of much of Méliès's earlier oeuvre and sets the stage for his even more serious effort, "Faust and Marguerite" (1904).