Word: mephisto
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...excesses they craved: sex, violence, power, the diabolical, damnation and salvation. And in Franz Liszt, who had more than a whiff of the necromancer about him, the Faust story found an ideal musical interpreter. In works such as Malediction and Totentanz for piano and orchestra, the four Mephisto Waltzes for solo piano and, most ambitious of all, the Faust Symphony, the great piano virtuoso gave free rein to his bursting creativity, conjuring up demonic worlds through his pianistic and compositional sorcery...
...Faust by the mad Hungarian poet Nikolaus Lenau, who wrote his own treatment of the demoniac tale. Nocturnal Procession, a stately, spooky march of Gregorian- chanting penitents, is one of the composer's most original and beautiful creations. The Dance in the Village Inn, better known as the First Mephisto Waltz, sweeps forward with a cloven-hoofed fiddler calling the tune...
...Germany, myth and reality intertwine: the real Faust was Luther's contemporary, and Goethe set one of his play's scenes in the Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig. Today the ancient tavern is guarded by statues of Faust and Mephisto, and the latter is seen casting a spell over a group of Leipzigers. "Loose the bonds of illusion from their eyes!" Mephisto says as he releases them. "Remember how the devil joked." They are words too often unheeded, as modern history testifies...
...rest of this loose-jointed remake of Thunderball. Once again, the scenario has something to do with the theft of nuclear warheads and their use as a blackmail weapon. The plot's mastermind is played with silky, neurotic charm by Klaus Maria Brandauer (so fine in Mephisto), while as his chief agent provocateur, Barbara Carrera deftly parodies all the fatal femmes who have slithered through Bond's career. And it is good to see Connery's grave stylishness in this role again. It makes Bond's cynicism and opportunism seem the product of genuine worldliness...
...Mephisto. An actor in search of a role sells his soul to the Nazis in order to obtain it. In István Szabo's unbalancing and brilliant study of a theatrical mind at the end of its tether, Klaus Maria Brandauer gives a great performance as a man too innocent about his own ambition...