Convinced of the human soul’s susceptibility to corruption, the evil spirit Mephisto makes a wager with the Archangel Gabriel that he will wrest the soul of the elderly scholar Faust from God. Powerless and desperate, Faust is forced to watch his fellow citizens die of the plague and surrenders himself to the tempter Mephisto, who grants him youth, wealth and power. In return, Faust renounces God and His heavenly hosts, whereupon he becomes increasingly reckless and a downward spiral begins that ends only in death. In his adaptation of the Faust story, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau draws on elements from the *Historia von Doktor Johann Fausten* as well as from Marlowe’s and Goethe’s plays, giving the story a new and thoroughly original twist. Entangled in the metaphysical struggle between good and evil, between light and shadow, there is only one means by which humanity can emerge from the religious Middle Ages into the bright modern age: love.