Mephistopheles on the PSP:
<http://monroelab.net/images/Mephistopheles_PSP.jpg>
Why was a silent film playing on my PSP? Read on.
Years ago -- never mind how many -- I sat in my apartment drinking Merlot while lounging like Louis XVI.
Of course, I was trying to forget a woman. She had dirty blond hair, amazing legs and the curiously arousing habit of biting my neck in public. She practiced her neck biting fetish on me for a while and then decided to move to Utah, taking all the gifts Aphrodite gave her to that snowy outpost.
"Will you come with me?"
"Where?"
"To Utah, silly!"
Alas, the answer was no.
If only she'd planned to move somewhere distracting like Reykjavik, Iceland, we'd probably have 8 kids by now and be celebrating the fifth anniversary of our hot mess divorce by listening to Bjork.
Back to the apartment, and the Merlot...
On the television, a documentary was playing featuring the narration talents of Old Blighty actor Kenneth Branagh. The doc was about the history of Universum Film AG, or UFA, the national film company of Germany from 1917 to the Gotterdamerung year of 1945 (Did I tell you the story of my Grandfather? He served in a segregated tank battalion and rained fire on Nazis. "Grandpop, is it wrong to kill?" "Yes. Unless it's Nazis in which case squeeze the trigger and reload as needed.")
UFA
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFA_(film)>
At one point, the work of noted director/screenwriter F.W. Murnau (the man who gave the world "Nosferatu") was discussed. An extended scene from Murnau's 1926 film, "Faust" moved on my tv screen. Mephistopheles and Faust are riding on a cloud to the east as the world rolls beneath them.
Murnau's "Faust":
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust_(1926_film)>
It was a remarkable sequence filmed in a beautiful, silvery black and white. I longed to see the rest of this movie.
Years passed, wars were fought, beloved dogs died, loves' labors were lost. I always remembered "Faust" and the scene which flowed like cinematic butter.
But would I ever see it?
The answer is yes, because it's now in the public domain and available from Archive.org:
Archive.org
<http://www.archive.org/details/Faust_1926>
I downloaded it, merged in a subtitle file and converted the media type to a PSP compatible form of mpeg.
All of which gave me a chance to watch this remarkable film while riding on a commuter train. The woman sitting next to me leaned over slightly, glanced at the screen and smiled.
I wonder what Murnau would think of a West Philly boy who spent his youth playing pick up hoops with rats and turning to roaches for sage financial advice watching his movie on a science fictional device in a world in which the Americans are occupying Mesopotamia, a black fellow is President Elect, a space station orbits the globe, the Chinese are a major power and his movie is freely available at the press of a button.
Our world, and our mundane lives, are far stranger than anything dreamt of by Murnau's UFA colleague, Fritz Lang, for "Metropolis".
.d.
