Northwest Film Forum

In Svankmajer’s Faust, we are audience number two. Number one is a gentleman in Prague who exits the subway, chances upon an enigmatic map, and follows it to a marionette theatre where puppets act out Goethe’s Faust with hilariously grotesque emphasis. As befits a story of men manipulated by angels, the cast includes clay sculptures, and marionettes—carved by Svankmajer himself as he took the Faust legend to its extreme. Be prepared for armies of insects and tirades in demonic tongues. But be ready, too, to be enchanted—as our mysterious gentleman is enchanted—by the strangest and slimiest adaptation of Faust to date, which earned Svankmajer the Czech Critics Awards’ Best Animated Film and the Karlovy Vary’s Special Price of the Jury.

Our Jan Svankmajer series is sponsored by the Center for Czech Education and Culture.