Doctor Faustus

The extraordinary amount of care that has gone into devising the screenplay does a substantial amount of the work, but the co-directors are very good at getting first-rate performances out of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, and between them seem to know all there is to know about the intricacies of film production as well.

A magnificent film of Marlowe’s play about the German doctor who sold his soul for magic powers and went to hell for it, shot at the Laurentiis Studios in Rome with an air of Rossellini’s Giovanna d’Arco al rogo.

Variety was most foolishly unimpressed, Renata Adler in the New York Times screeched like Bluebeard’s hawk and shat.