Word: faustus
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Only twice does this contrast come through--a scene in a local tavern where everyone gets good-and-old-fashioned drunk, and then Faustus tries to show off his black arts. Suddenly the division is there--everyone watches Faustus uneasily. He is a stanger; he is not one of them; he is damned...
...think Taylor and Burton are bad in real movie magazine life, you should see them in Doctor Faustus. The film wastes what must have been a lavish budget and ignores the essence of Marlowe's play: Faustus's psychological torment...
...whole film is set in a world apart--a world of evil spirits, of voices in the air and tiny flashing lights. Burton and Richard McWhorter (the codirectors) should have tried--at the very least--to show how Faustus is gradually cut off from the other world--the world of his friends, of his servants and of God. But this other world fades away, and we are left with Richard Burton in the midst of hellions and sour pleasures. McWhorter and Burton should have set this off by showing more of the happy, normal life that presumably surrounds Faustus...
Another glimpse of Faustus's inner nightmare comes when three of his students visit him an hour before he is due to go down to hell. They look shy and callow, out of it, as he stands talking about hell--which has been in Faustus's mind every day now for 24 years...
...film never explains much at all. It begins at the beginning with Faustus getting his doctorate in divinity. All his friends cheering--and then comes the sinister part. Two nefarious characters have set up a little magic booth on the side of the street. They mutter--very ominously--"Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin to sound the depth of that thou wilt profess...