Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Mephisto Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 7, 2020

Ronald Coleman won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in 1947’s A Double Life, a film built around the conceit of an actor portraying Othello who slowly begins to think he actually is Othello. Mephisto plies at least somewhat the same territory, albeit arguably with considerably more nuance and inarguably more irony, as Klaus Maria Brandauer portrays an actor named Hendrik Höfgen who works in Germany just as the Nazi regime is starting to achieve significant power. One of Höfgen’s “dream roles” is that of Mephisto in a production of Faust, and while he indeed is able to realize that dream, it actually turns out to be a nightmare when Höfgen realizes that all that he has forsaken in order to achieve that dream has actually made him more Faust than Faust's "seducer". It may sound almost deliberately trite, but this underlying tension actually provides the film with considerable impact, especially due to Brandauer's riveting performance. Mephisto was the first film from Hungary to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and it’s an often disturbing look at a perhaps slightly pathetic, needy man who gets caught up in the epochal changes wrought by a nefarious sociopolitical movement. As Samm Deighan gets into in her interesting commentary included on this disc as a supplement, the film was culled from a novel by Klaus Mann, the openly gay son of Thomas Mann who also had a recurrent drug problem, two things that colored both his life in general as well as his reaction to the uprising of the Nazis. Klaus Mann was stripped of his German citizenship relatively early in the Nazi era, and all of these elements may have played into Mann's deconstruction of the Nazi mythos in his original novel. There's also some interesting "meta" data courtesy of the fact that Mann reportedly based his book at least partially on the life of his brother-in-law Gustaf Gründgens, who ironically would play Mephistopheles in the 1960 film version of Faust, but who is perhaps better remembered from his role in Fritz Lang's M.

Films about the corrosive effects of Nazism are not exactly rare, but what's bracing about Mephisto is how it weaves this probably well traveled territory within both the Faust lore as well as some subtext of an actor's ability to pretend to be something he is not. It's interesting in this particular regard that Mephisto actually documents at least some corrosion of Höfgen's perhaps already questionable moral compass before the Nazis even really enter the story. In any case, Höfgen would hardly seem to be the stuff of easy assimilation into Nazi ideals, since he's shown to be relatively far left and he even has a black lover named Juliette (Karin Boyd), who is introduced in just one of the film's slightly off kilter scenes depicting Höfgen's behaviors poised on a tightrope between slight goofiness and perhaps more feral tendencies.

What's often fascinating about Brandauer's portrayal is how Höfgen is strangely sympathetic despite being less than honorable (which is perhaps a more than charitable way to frame it). The typical characterization of actors needing approval is played to brilliant effect here in that at least one audience Höfgen is playing to is the Nazis. If Höfgen realizes too late that he's Faust, not Mephistopheles, this film's real Mephisto is probably the Nazi officer named Tábornagy (Rudolf Hoppe), who offers Höfgen an entreé to a world he ached to join.

Samm Deighan makes a compelling case as to some of the film's allegorical aspects, and in that regard one of the things about Mephisto that is so consistently arresting is how it layers so much content so relatively effortlessly. One man's slow but steady dissolution at the hands of events that spin out of his control might almost seem to be the stuff of film noir, but Mephisto is both (and at times simultaneously) overtly theatrical and rather alarmingly realistic feeling.

Mephisto Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mephisto is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber's Kino Classics imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. The back cover of this release touts a "stunning 4K restoration by the Hungarian National Film Archive", and in this case the hyperbole is not that overstated. While there are a few minor blemishes that have managed to evade the clean up, and color temperature can be just slightly variant at times, the overall look here is beautifully organic and almost always nicely suffused. Fine detail is often impressive, especially in some close- ups, though in that regard, the film's more stylized aspects, as in the now famous closing couple of moments, don't necessarily support superb fine detail levels by design. I noticed no compression anomalies.

Mephisto Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mephisto features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono tracks in German and Hungarian. The tracks didn't differ substantially to my ears in terms of overall mix, other than the obvious differences in language. There is unavoidably "loose sync" here at times in both languages due to this or that actor being dubbed, but fidelity is fine, supporting both spoken and musical moments perfectly capably. Optional English subtitles are available.

Mephisto Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Update: Mephisto arrived before the two other István Szabó films Kino Lorber has also released on Blu-ray, and so I didn't initially realize that all three releases repeat some of the same supplements.

• The Central Europe of István Szabó (1080p; 3:11) is basically a collection of clips from various Szabo films.


• Remembrance of Production Designer József Romvári (1080p; 8:12) is a really sweet piece done by (as his credit for the film reads) art director József Romvári's granddaughter. This has some snippets from films, but also some nostalgic music and fun home movies.


• Trailer (1080p; 1:39) is actually promotion for all three István Szabó films released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.


• Audio Commentary with film historian Samm Deighan can be found under the Audio menu.

This is the relatively rare Kino release that I've personally reviewed that actually comes with an insert booklet, and in this case it has two interesting essays, stills and some cast, crew and technical data.

Mephisto Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There may be some diehard Dudley Moore fans who might take issue with this, but I am personally kind of stunned that Klaus Maria Brandauer didn't receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his work in this film (and I'm singling Moore out as the most likely "candidate" to be replaced in a year that saw legends Warren Beatty, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman and eventual winner Henry Fonda nominated in that category). Brandauer's captivating and disturbing performance is matched by Hoppe's, and the supporting cast is similarly excellent. The film also manages to capture its epochal era superbly. The underlying premise of Mephisto is as hoary as the Faust legend itself, but that doesn't make it any less powerful and relevant. Technical merits are solid and the supplementary package enjoyable, and Mephisto comes Highly recommended.