Dr. Faustus

IF you 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.

Burton gets little chance to display his acting. Instead of watching the deterioration of a gentleman and a scholar, we are treated to a tedious string of ghouls and black magic, hot and voluptuous women--all of which loses any excitement after the first half-hour.

The 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's internal nightmare.

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.

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.

But the 24 years just aren't there. Burton looks the same as he did at the beginning of the movie. You just have to assume that somewhere along the line he asked Mephistopheles to keep him young-looking, because unless I was asleep at the time, there is nothing to explain this.

THE 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."

Faustus goes home and, after a few fancy ruminations, decides to abandon the ways of God. You get the idea that he used to be very godly and noble--Burton always looks either noble or once-noble no matter what part he plays. But when he repudiates his whole life after five minutes though, you have just put it down to the depravity of man.

Mephistopheles (played by Andrea Teuber '64) begs Faustus to stay away from the underworld, but Mephistopheles is such a stoic sufferer that he doesn't succeed in convincing Faustus that hell is really that awful. He does convince us, however, provided we can believe that someone could keep so quiet about his misery.

Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, always manages to look sultry, alluring, and so conscious of her beauty that she almost makes you believe it's really there. She drags Faustus into hell, showing her true colors at last: bright red lips, those two even rows of pearly teeth, and skin the color of a sour green apple.