Doctor Faustus (1967)

A Disappointing Continuation

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

We all know Richard Burton is great at making Shakespearian language sound like normal words. However, that doesn't mean he has to do it all the time, and you don't have to watch every movie in which he does it. In other words, don't watch Doctor Faustus.Richard Burton must have really, really wanted to make this movie. He starred in it, co-produced it, and co-directed it! I don't know what was the matter with him, but the film is a train wreck. It's boring, creepy in a bad way, way too wordy, terribly slow, and nonsensically directed. For most of the movie, there's a sort of circular filter over the camera lens, and half the screen is blurry. For no reason.Faust is an ancient tale about signing your soul to the devil in exchange for youth, vigor, and a beautiful woman. There have been operatic and musical adaptations, dramatic and comedic inspirations, and usually they're at least moderately entertaining. Doctor Faustus is rotten. Richard Burton stands in his room for twenty minutes soliloquizing whether or not to summon the devil. Then he finally decides to do it (which is not a nail biter, since we know the story!) and he spends another ten minutes saying he doesn't believe the devil is all-powerful. To prove his power, the devil sends a proxy, and the proxy summons Elizabeth Taylor out of thin air, who, as soon as Richard Burton starts caressing her, turns into an ugly, old man. Have you had enough? I have.

I'll never forget the review of this particular movie that I read in the N.Y. Times many years ago: "Ye Gods and little fishes, break out the gin for this one!" Now that I've finally gotten a chance to see it, I know exactly what they meant. I suppose the production of this film was intended to answer a question on the minds of many film-goers and gossip-column readers in the late 1960s; namely, what can the most famous and notorious couple in pictures possibly do to top "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". The answer: "Doctor Faustus". In this film Richard Burton barters away his immortal soul to Lucifer for a roll in the hay with Elizabeth Taylor. Top that for an ego trip!Admittedly, this film also includes a great deal of plummy Elizabethan language, and plenty of lurid, pseudo-psychedelic special effects. However, most of the movie consists of Dick spouting reams of incomprehensible gibberish (in both Latin and English) in that incomparable voice of his, and drooling, literally, over Liz. Liz actually had the much easier role in this movie. She wasn't required to recite a single line of dialog. All she had to do was simply stand there and BE, the effect of which was to seemingly mesmerize every male actor in sight. Come on, what actress wouldn't give anything for a role like that? And for the piece de resistance, at the end of the movie Liz, laughing maniacally, gets to drag Dick, kicking and screaming, down to Hell for his well-deserved reward. What wife wouldn't have a ball playing a scene like that with her husband? By that point in the movie, anyone who isn't rolling in the isles with laughter simply has no sense of humor!

I say that a mark of a good movie is that you don't have to be familiar with the book, play, etc that served as the basis or inspiration. So, having said that, and, subsequently, not having seen nor read Marlowe's play "Dr Faustus", I can honestly say the first 10 minutes of Burton's film adaptation bored me so senseless that I didn't even bother sticking around for the always-compelling Ms Taylor to make her entrance...and couldn't have cared less.It was that bad. And since it was solely Burton and his monologues, along with Burton's campy directorial choices which ate up those tortuous 10 minutes...I would deem this film as Burton's, and only Burton's, rotten egg.

Richard Burton co-produced, co-directed, and stars in this adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's play "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus", concerning an aged 16th century German scholar who conjures up Mephistopheles, servant to Lucifer. Despite a warring of conscience in which saints and demons both attempt to sway Faustus to their side, the conflicted doctor signs his soul over to the Devil in exchange for lust and power, quickly discovering the black magic not living up to its promise. Marlowe's poetry, like subterranean Shakespeare, seems to flow naturally from Burton, and the combination of soliloquy and performance is a lively one. The art direction, production design, and cinematography are all first-rate, with pop-art colors insanely, imaginatively blended together like bewitched Jell-O powder. Elizabeth Taylor's intermittent (and mostly silent) entrances and exits as Helen of Troy probably do the picture more harm than good, but Burton is in fine form (after an unsure start) and Andreas Teuber cuts a striking figure as the Devil's Aid. The film has the same late-'60s, hallucinogenic quality of the other-worldly "Barbarella" (and no wonder: both pictures were made in Rome under the auspices of movie mogul Dino de Laurentiis). You can't take your eyes off "Doctor Faustus"--and, for fear of missing anything, you wouldn't want to. **1/2 from ****