Doctor Faustus | |
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Directed by | Richard Burton Nevill Coghill |
Screenplay by | Nevill Coghill |
Based on | The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe |
Produced by | Richard Burton Richard McWhorter |
Starring |
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Cinematography | Gábor Pogány |
Edited by | John Shirley |
Music by | Mario Nascimbene |
Color process | Technicolor |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 93 minutes [1] |
Country | United Kingdom |
Languages | English Latin |
Doctor Faustus is a 1967 British horror film adaptation of the 1588 Christopher Marlowe play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus directed by Richard Burton and Nevill Coghill. The first theatrical film version of a Marlowe play, it was the only film directed by Burton or Coghill, Burton's Oxford University mentor. [2] It starred Burton as the title character Faustus, with Elizabeth Taylor appearing in a silent role as Helen of Troy. The film is a permanent record of a stage production that Burton starred in and staged with Coghill at the Oxford University Dramatic Society in 1966. Burton would not appear on stage again until he took over the role of Martin Dysart in Equus on Broadway ten years later.
University of Wittenberg scholar Faustus earns his doctorate, but his insatiable craving for knowledge and power leads Faustus to try his hand at necromancy in an attempt to conjure Mephistopheles out of hell. Signing the pact in his own blood, Faustus bargains his soul to Lucifer in exchange for 24 living years with Mephistopheles as his slave. Mephistopheles proceeds to reveal to Faustus the works and doings of the Devil.
Of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, Queen's College, Oxford, England:
With:
Reviews of the staged version in the British press were "less than enthusiastic", with critics commenting "a sad example of university drama at its worst", with an uninspired Burton "walking through the part". Taylor was "undeniably decorative, but there was nothing much to say about her acting ability". [3] The movie received a terribly negative review in The New York Times , Renata Adler criticizing the adaptation of the text ("the play has been quite badly cut"), Burton's performance ("he seems happiest shouting in Latin, or in Ms. Taylor's ear"), the score ("some horrible electronic Wagnerian theme music"), and Taylor's role ("in this last role [Alexander's paramour], she is, for some reason, frosted all over with silver—like a pastry, or a devaluated refugee from Goldfinger [4] "), reserving praise only for Teuber's performance ("one fine, very pious performance"). [5]
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play Tamburlaine, modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his catering to the prurient tastes of his Elizabethan audiences for generous displays of extreme physical violence, cruelty, and bloodshed.
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was a British and American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She then became the world's highest paid movie star in the 1960s, remaining a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood cinema.
Richard Burton was a Welsh actor.
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust.
Mephistopheles, also known as Mephisto, is a demon featured in German folklore. He originally appeared in literature as the demon in the Faust legend and has since become a stock character appearing in other works of arts and popular culture.
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about the title character Faust. It was probably written in 1592 or 1593, shortly before Marlowe's death. Two different versions of the play were published in the Jacobean era several years later.
Faust is a tragic play in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, usually known in English as Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. Nearly all of Part One and the majority of Part Two are written in rhymed verse. Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. Faust is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature.
Doctor Faustus may refer to:
Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and is one of the most splendid ages of English literature. In addition to drama and the theatre, it saw a flowering of poetry, with new forms like the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and dramatic blank verse, as well as prose, including historical chronicles, pamphlets, and the first English novels. Major writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Hooker, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney and Thomas Kyd.
There are a wide range of ways in which people have represented the Trojan War in literature and the arts.
Historia von D. Johann Fausten is an opera by the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934–1998) in three acts, with introduction and epilogue to the German libretto by Jörg Morgener and Alfred Schnittke after the anonymous prose book of the same name.
Faust has inspired artistic and cultural works for over four centuries. The following lists cover various media to include items of historic interest, enduring works of high art, and recent representations in popular culture. The entries represent works that a reader has a reasonable chance of encountering rather than a complete catalog.
Andreas Teuber was an American academic and actor. He was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University.
This article lists cultural references to Mephistopheles, the fictional devil from Faust and Doctor Faustus who has been used in other pieces of literature, film, comics and music.
Kevin Trainor is an Irish actor of stage and screen.
Thomas Arthur Darvill is an English actor. He is known for portraying Rory Williams, a companion of the Eleventh Doctor in the television series Doctor Who (2010–2012), as well as Rip Hunter in Legends of Tomorrow and Rev. Paul Coates in Broadchurch (2013–2017). From 2013 to 2014, he appeared in the lead role in the theatre musical Once in the West End and on Broadway. He played Curley in the West End revival of Oklahoma!, for which he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
Paul Hilton is an English actor on stage, radio, and TV. He trained at the Welsh College of Music & Drama.
Patrick O'Kane is an Irish actor who was born in 1965 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has been part of the companies of the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. He has appeared in London's West End and at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In addition to his extensive stage work, O'Kane has appeared in movies and on television in many parts.
Frank Hauser CBE was a British theatre director.
Faustus, the Last Night is an opera in English by French composer Pascal Dusapin, inspired by Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. The work was premiered on 21 January 2006 by the Berlin State Opera, a coproduction with the Opéra de Lyon. It was first staged in the United States at the Spoleto Festival USA 2007.