Horsemen from Hell: Murnau's Faust

 

The hideous horsemen from hell. From Murnau's Faust, the movie of my dreams.

A Faustian Bargain (or, white robes and turkey soup)

One of my weirder dreams, which I only remember in detail because I had it right before I woke up.

Faustian Dream  March 24, 2023

We were having people over for homemade turkey soup which I always make after Xmas.  I don't know how many (seven?), or whether they were friends or relatives, though my brother Walt seemed to be in the mix. 

I was busy preparing for this by knitting white garments out of sheep wool for everyone to wear. These were long robes, floor-length, with long sleeves and hoods.

We were all going to watch the silent film version of Murnau's Faust on TV.

I realized there was not enough meat for the soup, so I went to look in the freezer. I also realized all the knitted robes were child-sized and would not fit anyone. The robes also had legs like they were pants or jumpsuits.

I had complaints (from someone?) that the wool used in the robes irritated some people’s skin and they couldn’t wear them, and I wished I had used synthetic, but the real wool was to give the robes a special quality and significance and would cost more.

We watched a part of  Faust which I hadn’t seen before (I expected to see the phantom horses at the start, but saw some sort of Cyclops being killed and wondered if this was a director’s cut). Gabor Mate was at this event and wearing a very short version of the gown with skinny legs sticking out – he was on my right. He was the only person I recognized. Others were there, very vague and shadowy but, did not know who they were or how many or even why they were there.

I wore the gown with the hood pulled up, like a Druid.

Now that I look at it, this seems like a sort of cult wearing robes I’d made, and eating food I made, but I still have no idea who they were or why we were there or what sort of cult it was, or why I would ever organize or take part in a cult to begin with, as I hate them, but am also fascinated with them and can't get enough of reading about them and watching documentaries about them. I have recently been reading about NXVIM, or however you spell it, the cult where women are held down and branded. No branding took place, but no one ate turkey soup either, and except for Gabor Mate no one seemed to be wearing the robes (but I am not sure because I could not really see them). The familiar music from the opening of Faust was playing, but it looked all different (I had seen a clip from it recently).

And all this before breakfast!

I TOLD you Disney was a ripoff!

From Murnau's 1926 silent masterpiece, FAUST

From Disney's FANTASIA:  running low on ideas, boys?

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Scariest Halloween video EVER!

If you've ever seen Disney's Fantasia, the first one I mean, these figures will be strangely familiar to you. Disney ripped off the whole Night on Bald Mountain segment from Murnau's 1926 silent classic, Faust (even that big devil-guy with the wings). These skeletal horses are a million times scarier than anything Disney ever copied:  I defy you to turn out all the lights, and put it on full-screen.

Preferably on Halloween night.

I have a strange history with this clip. Years and years ago, probably in the early '80s, my husband and I were visiting Edmonton with the kids. We did this periodically to avoid suffocating in the small town we lived in. When we arrived at the hotel, somebody put the TV on, and I swear THIS came on, the hideous horsemen. The music that went with it was very, very strange, not like this prancing dignified orchestral stuff. It was just about as hideous as the animation and went backwards as much as forwards. Then the whole thing just sort of stopped and went back to MTV or whatever it was. I have no idea who had taken this footage and played with it like that, and over the years I began to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing. (I drank quite a bit in those days.)

Then a lot more time went by. Probably eight or so years ago, a strange documentary came on TV. It was in French with an English voice-over and I haven't been able to find it since, though I think I found a reference to it on IMDB. The movie was all about "influences" on Walt Disney's animation: in other words, how much he stole, and where he stole it from.

At a certaint point the French narrator began to go on and on about Fantasia, and in particular Night on Bald Mountain. Then they showed the clip of the skeletal horses, the horsemen from hell - and I realized with a shock, that was IT, that was the clip that made my insides quiver all those years ago!

So I had something to go on, a title at least: Murnau's Faust. This was before YouTube however, so I had to squirrel away the information. Then for a while there was no mention of it on YouTube. No one had pirated it yet.

If you go away for a while, then come back, you'll almost always find what you want. Here it is, in all its hideous glory. Fun! Fun! October 31!

Where Disney stole his stuff

I saw a documentary on TV years ago that talked about European influences on Walt Disney's animation. To make a long story short, he stole everything. These ghostly riders are from Murnau's 1926 masterpiece, Faust. Compare and contrast to Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia: except that these guys are a lot scarier. How did they do this, I wonder? Special effects were all manual then, but surprisingly creepy. Those horses, Jesus! (It took me years and years to track this clip down. I still can't find the documentary anywhere. I think it was originally in French.)

And again

Night on Faust's Mountain