Essential Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) était un génie universel : homme de lettres, peintre, naturaliste, collectionneur et polyglotte mais aussi homme politique. L'acteur Edgar Selge, le metteur en scène Claus Peymann et le peintre Jonathan Meese, rock star de l'art contemporain en Allemagne, rendent hommage à celui qui fut surnommé le "prince des poètes".

In 1957 Gustaf Gründgens staged a new production of Goethe's Faust in which he once again played Mephisto, a part he had played since 1932. The brilliant production was a huge success and ran for a couple of years. In 1959 Peter Gorski captured the performance on film in his directorial film debut. Basically it is a registration of the production, but Gorksi did manage to accentuate the details of the acting by using enough medium and close-up shots which give a view on the acting you normally would not able to see in a theater.