Doctor Faustus (1967)

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.

RICHARD BURTON gets to tear the scenery to pieces as DOCTOR FAUSTUS, directing himself into a frenzy of stylized theatrical acting as though he didn't know the camera would magnify his every over-sized movement.Fortunately, ELIZABETH TAYLOR is only allowed to parade her beauteous face before the close-up cameras without uttering a word. Only toward the end does she have to shriek like a mad woman as Faustus loses his soul to hell.But Burton's histrionics are on display and I doubt whether Charles Laughton or Peter Ustinov ever indulged in such extravagant overacting. His performance is a spectacle in itself.And unfortunately, the other cast members are almost mute by comparison, none of them exhibiting anything more than amateurish acting.The sometimes imaginative staging is pretty to look at, but none of it manages to stir up more than a modicum of interest. It's all done up in garish Technicolor with sets that look as though the low budget was put to efficient use.Summing up: In my humble opinion, a weird sort of bomb, totally lacking any sort of entertainment value.

I was so astonished to see Marlowe's 400 year old play done so superbly by Richard Burton whom I consider to be one of the finest actors of the 20th century and the wonderful production which held your interest throughout, the other actors were terrific, especially the actor who played Mephistopholis, Now we come to Miss Elizabeth Taylor who played Helen Of Troy- Beauty Miss Taylor had in abundance but for some reason she had on so much eye make-up she looked laughable, surely Helen was a natural beauty - another silly thing was the fact that whenever Miss Taylor appeared she was accompanied by a soprano who sang extremely loud and sang the theme from Star Trek..

Cerebral and altogether too-literal transcript of Christopher Marlowe’s venerable play – the end result is opulent yet claustrophobic, not to mention dull.Burton the producer/director certainly made inspired choices for his collaborators – production designer John De Cuir, cinematographer Gabor Pogany, composer Mario Nascimbene. Burton the actor, then, is riveting as always (particularly the monologue towards the end) – but real-life spouse Elizabeth Taylor is simply ludicrous as Faustus’ object of desire (in various disguises including Helen of Troy)! The remaining cast is largely made up of Oxford University drama students (the University itself, of which Burton was a former graduate, partly financed the film!): of these, only Andreas Teuber’s bald-headed, monk-clad Mephistopheles manages a striking performance.The “Mondo Digital” review had likened this to the cult horror films made by Hammer, Roger Corman and Mario Bava: judging by the campy Papal sequence (with a host of fey clergymen on whom Faustus plays childish pranks) and an equally tacky conjuring act before a medieval court, I’d say that Burton and Coghill probably drew more on the decadent work of Federico Fellini or Pier Paolo Pasolini than anything else! Anyway, the experimental nature of the film extends to the baffling over-use of a pointless ‘foggy’ effect; its depiction of lust, however, emerges as traditionally naïve – with frolicking satyrs in a garden setting and decorous female nudity (including Taylor herself for one very brief moment).Ulimately, DOCTOR FAUSTUS is to be considered an interesting failure – a personal tour-de-force for Burton but which, perhaps, needed a steadier hand…say, Joseph Losey (with whom the two stars would soon work on BOOM! [1968], curiously enough, a similar and equally maligned blend of fantasy and theatricality).