Many years ago, Christopher Marlowe wrote a story that set the motivation of many well-meaning but doomed protagonists of what would eventually become the classic horror film--the burning desire to achieve the unachievable, regardless of morality or cost.  That story is, of course, known, among other titles, as "Doctor Faustus," and it once was put on the screen by none other than Richard Burton, a production that featured his then- wife, Elizabeth Taylor.   That film is under discussion below, so prepare yourself to spend a little while with...

By DON MANKOWSKI

Richard Burton was at one time regarded the world’s greatest actor. To his credit are such films as The Robe (1953), Becket (1964) and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1965). When they needed someone to play Edwin Booth (a historically great actor forever overshadowed by his assassin brother) in Prince Of Players (1955), it was Burton they tabbed. When Burton deigned (or is it Daned?) to play Hamlet on the Broadway stage in 1964, it was too big an event for a theater: it was broadcast nationally to movie houses via closed circuit.

He was also guilty of some of the worst performances ever to stain celluloid: witness The Assassination Of Trotsky, Bluebeard (both 1972), or the disastrous Exorcist 2: The Heretic (1977). Still, he was never dull.

Elizabeth Taylor was an actress to be reckoned with since the age of ten. She was certainly the world’s most glamorous woman for extended periods. Even as the years went on and Liz went through a staggering number of marriages and even more dress sizes, she could reclaim that title at will, say by dieting a day or two and showing up to hand out a Best Picture Oscar every few years. The camera truly loved her. When these two were a couple, they were understandably difficult to ignore.

The partnership began, scandalously, with Cleopatra (1963) the biggest screen spectacle (in more ways than one) to date. Over a decade, it spawned some critical successes and some turkeys: Who’s Afraid Of Virgina Woolf? (1966) and Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew (1967) to one side; The Sandpiper (1965) and Boom (1968) to another.

One of the oddities along the trail was a maligned but nevertheless interesting film that I will examine here.

In the mid 1960s, Burton paid a visit to his alma mater and took part in a revival of one of the classics of the British stage. With the current Oxford University drama class, he mounted a new production of Christopher Marlowe’s 1588 morality play, The Tragicall Historie Of The Life And Death of D. Faustus.

That's right: Christopher had no spell-checker. Sometimes it went The Tragical History Of The Damnable Life and Deserved Death Of Doctor Faustus because they had no marquees with which to contend, or the concept of a "spoiler." Marlowe was an exact contemporary of William Shakespeare, and some revisionist historians have at times tried, without much success, to attribute some of the Bard's plays to his pen.

Richard Burton co-produced a 1967 film of the play, simply titled Doctor Faustus. It's the age-old story about a pact with the Devil. It’s a familiar fate in fantastic film lore, the basis for All That Money Can Buy (aka The Devil and Daniel Webster), Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Damn Yankees, Bedazzled and a few dozen more treatments. But this telling is in many ways the granddaddy of ‘em all.

Old in years but fresh with his university degree (Wittenberg, Class of Fifteen-Something), learned scholar John Faustus has to decide upon a professorial career. As if just to demonstrate his arrogance, he dismisses logic, medicine, law and divinity as beneath his talents.

There remains for him a fascination with magic and the concealed arts. Faustus seeks out an old trunk of books and artifacts in his secret cellar. Add some bad advice from his sinister acquaintances Valdes and Cornelius, and a mysterious vision of a beautiful woman, and Faustus "chooses the Dark Side" as we'd put it today. He becomes a necromancer in training.

In a cavernous recess, Faustus conducts an ancient ritual, involving animals, potions, daggers and blood, while he mocks Jehovah's name and declaims blasphemous prayers devoutly to the Prince of Hell.

A skeleton hangs by a noose, stage left; as the ceremony drags on, it slowly assumes a living shape. (Those must be anti-maggots we see, depositing flesh on the bones.) Suddenly, Faustus is no longer alone. He has been joined by the arch-demon Mephistophilis. Faustus finds this manifestation of the demon too horrible, and charges him to appear instead as an old Franciscan friar, "for that holy shape becomes a devil best." A contract is made.

I, John Faustus of Wittenberg, Doctor, by these presents, do give both body and soul to Lucifer and his minister Mephistophilis, and furthermore grant unto them that twenty-four years being expired, the articles above written inviolate, full power to fetch or carry the said John Faustus' body and soul, flesh, blood, or goods into their habitation wheresoever. By me John Faustus.

Faustus wounds his arm, but must dismiss the spiritual warnings of his good conscience before his blood will flow and permit him to sign the deed. When he finally manages to sign away his soul, there is a subtle yet palpable change in the environment.

According to the bargain, Lucifer’s lieutenant, Mephistophilis, will wait upon Faustus as commended for the twenty-four years, permitting him to accumulate unlimited knowledge and power, and indulge all his desires. Indeed, Faustus grows physically younger as Mephistophilis reads back the agreement.

For a start, Faustus indulges the mind and body: he enjoys some philosophical debate with Mephistophilis, and later a dalliance with some exotic courtesans produced by the demon. But as time passes, he begins to regret his actions, and is moved to pray to God. "When I behold creation in a flower then I repent and curse thee wicked Mephistophilis, because thou hast deprived me of those joys."

At once he is summoned into the presence of Lucifer and Beelzebub, who seem to have set up shop just down the corridor. Lucifer, the fallen angel and Arch-Regent of Hell, has the Seven Deadly Sins put on a show, to apprise Faustus that "In Hell, there is all manner of delight." In the ballet of nymphs and satyrs that follows, there is tightly wound tension beneath the pastoral surface.

His resolution restored, Faustus calls upon Mephistophilis for new experiences. He is permitted to lead an army in a great battle and finds himself impervious to harm. Then, he entertains a king, mostly by putting a smart-ass heckler in his proper place: the knave sprouts horns at his command!

Faustus next has himself rendered invisible, the better to embarrass some clergy, the Pope and his Cardinals, no less. His tactics here might be described as those of the Poltergeist, the Three Stooges, and a touch of Blazing Saddles. This is on a quest for knowledge and power, mind you.

If all this weren't enough, he gets to drunkenly defy his landlord! He even requests a power mower, something unheard of in Sixteenth Century Germany. He'll have the best lawn in all…sorry, sorry, that’s a paramour. Even better.

However, four-and-twenty years go by swiftly. It appears that Faustus spends much of it brooding about his ultimate fate.

Faustus eventually learns that the visionary woman he's been seeing in many guises is in fact the peerless Helen of Greece, who materializes for him. "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" He asks. "Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss." A great opening line that!

"Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, and all is dross that is not Helena."

Still, immortality is not his. Helen is just another demon in a pleasant disguise, as he shall soon learn. Now, Hell may be an interesting place to visit--as Faustus did in that express tour--but you don’t want to stay there. Still, that's what's facing our man as time runs out.

As reckoning time nears, John Faustus stands under the stars, exposed to the heavens. "O, Faustus," he begins, "now hast thou but one bare hour to live, and then thou must be damned perpetually."

Despite his pleas, those horses of the night ride swiftly on. There is a vision:

But Faustus, being rent indeed, has to back down. His regretful speech is reduced to begging, first for a soul capable of salvation, next for a soul saved after thousands of years . . . and finally, for no soul at all.

The earth splits. Hell gapes and the demons beneath rise up to drag Faustus down. One is in the shape of Helen.

Faustus has the final word, in a voice-over reprise of something he read long ago:

"'Stipendium peccati, mors est.' The reward of sin is death."

Burton and Neville Coghill co-directed the film. Coghill, an Elizabethan scholar and dramatist, trimmed unwieldy comedy from the old play resulting in a reasonably-paced 93-minute feature. The play really is creaky and squeaky, but then again, oil was a rare commodity in the 16^th century. We didn't know that all those Arabs were standing on it. You had to squeeze whales to get it back then.

The tale plays out within the confines of Faustus’ study/laboratory, but the place has amorphous walls and changes with his crises. It is at times tight and cloistered, at others a vast underground of cobwebbed corridors and bone-ridden catacombs replete with arches and niches, torches and braziers, flasks and retorts, globes and sextants. There is religious iconography everywhere, as if God were looking disapprovingly over Faustus’ shoulder constantly. Faustus' good conscience speaks from a statue of the martyred St. Sebastian, in agony over his assault with many arrows. Bad counsel emanates from a human skull with a fleshless leer (and a video player built into one eye socket).

Faustus' magnificently cluttered chambers are somehow both deep within the earth and at the same time the tallest point on the planet, with a celestial dome that enhances the final soliloquy. Faustus need not venture out: when the story requires it, other locales materialize in lurid splendor. John DeCuir was the production designer, with art direction by Boris Juraga.

The tale is told with minimal and obvious special effects, probably what you'd expect from a pair of stage directors playing with movie magic. All too often, something described is immediately illustrated. It can occasionally be helpful, given the florid dialogue. (Lisping delivery indicates a bad guy.) Somehow, it all works nicely for the simplistic storyline.

There is one very special effect that trumps all: Elizabeth Taylor at her most stunning, in a multitude of roles and costumes. (Or, in one brief sequence, no costume at all. This was certainly a double--Liz didn't have to do this sort of thing anymore.) Burton’s casting of his wife here is nepotism as its very best. Liz has no lines, but pops up at all the right moments to stop traffic cold.

Mario Nascimbene produced a good many unusual musical scores in his career, such as for The Vikings (1958), and One Million Years B.C. (1966), but this is appropriately his most eerie work, especially his variations on a haunting theme for Mrs. Burton’s visitations and discordant stuff for the slow-mo antics in Hell. The score is generally mournful and brooding, but has some surprises. A human heartbeat on the soundtrack punctuates Faustus' crises.

Most of the student players in the supporting roles are adequate, but did not go on to professional film careers. Andreas Teuber is particularly subtle and effective as Mephistophilis, the demon done up as a bald Franciscan friar.

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I that saw the face of God, and tasted the eternal joys of heaven am not tormented with ten thousand hells, in being deprived of everlasting bliss?" Teuber sheds a solitary tear and thus reveals emotions forgotten for aeons behind the measured voice and the stoic face. "O, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, which strike a terror to my fainting soul."

Of course, Faustus is at the center of every scene, and it's a bravura performance by Burton, especially in the final scenes, where he is unimaginably alone and hopeless.

Burton is convincingly made up as an older man who becomes young via his demonic deal. Considering that he died before turning 60, it’s somewhat jarring to see him thus. The very ripe dialogue sounds just great in his voice, as Faustus turns on the bluster to cover his fears.

Of course, Faustus is the ultimate loser: it was his blasphemy, not his conjuring that made the diabolical pact possible. We just know he's too proud for his own good when he declares, "What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate for being deprived of the joys of heaven? Learn thou of Faustus' manly fortitude, and scorn those joys thou never shalt possess." He ultimately rejects every chance at repentance and salvation.

"O would I had never seen Wittenberg, never read book," mourns Faustus at the eleventh hour. "And what wonders I have done, all Germany can witness, yea, all the world, for which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world . . ."

There you have it: Faustus' tragic flaw was that he read too much. In Marlowe's day, I suppose that anybody who could read might have been suspect as a deep thinker too deep for his own good. This has resonances today, where learning (e.g., the discussion of evolution in the schools) is again being denounced as defiance of heaven.

*     *      *

The film is a recent DVD release from Columbia. The wide screen treatment is welcome. There’s the nice moment when Faustus is busily conjuring, unaware that the nearby human skeleton is undecomposing in nasty fashion. This detail is almost totally lost in the panned-and-scanned VHS issue. Fortunately, no one saw a need to turn down the "garish" switch. This is a film of excesses.

Of course the play features a good bit of dialogue in Latin, but the captioner felt no need to render these words! This is inexcusable, as there would be no work involved in transcribing these: they can be found verbatim in any good-sized library.

Spend a night with Liz, Dick and Old Nick: You won’t regret it.

(Don Mankowski has written for Cult Movies, Van Helsing's Journal (in which a condensed version of this article appeared as a film review), and Scarlet Street. Check out his Website.)

Thanks, Don.  Considering the amateur nature of most of the company and of the facilities, Doctor Faustus is an amazingly well-mounted production, with simply dazzling costumes and sets and special effects that more than enhance the film.  Richard Burton gives a bravura performance as the sort of scholar and scientist willing to sell his soul for what he cannot have or achieve, and Elizabeth Taylor is lustrous as the object of Faustus's fatal and overweening desires.  For classic horror fans, the connection between this tale and our favorite genre can be made by simply swapping the desire for beauty for the desire to create life...and Doctor Faustus becomes Doctor Frankenstein.

Article copyright © Don Mankowski

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