Faust. The ultimate tale of humankind fallen from grace, of temptation’s deathly lure. It is a fable which has fascinated the most accomplished of writers, from Goethe to Marlowe to Mann, but Jan Švankmajer’s film adaptation (1994) is the most horrific and wonderful of them all: a surreal portrayal of the scholar who sells his soul to the devil.

Petr Čepek is brusque and bemused, stoic and sardonic as the guileless protagonist, in a spirited performance which was to be his last. The actor died at the age of 54 in the year of the film’s release, a fact tragically analogous to the demise of his final incarnation, Faust. It is a denouement to be proud of, however. The theatrically sparse script apportions more words to marionettes than to men, yet great reams of emotion are conveyed in the expressions on Čepek’s malleable face, which itself seems to become increasingly part of Švankmajer’s disturbing mise-en-scène.

… it is rare to see a film as surreal and repulsively engaging as this.

Each moment buzzes with potential significance, unsure as to whether a flaccid foetus will grow in a bubbling glass bottle or apples will rot before your eyes or whether, in fact, nothing will happen; to let you catch your breath before the inevitable next surprise. Chaotic masochism and madcap chaos are animated with a pace which induces mild panic and euphoric malaise. Every sense is stilted to high alert – noise is visceral and squelching, vision is assaulted and regaled, smothered and stroked. Live action, life-size marionettes and clay-mation are concocted into a potion of the most sumptuous and alluring black magic, dark artistry at its most alluring in this most terrible of tales.

Dark, witty and utterly inspired, it is rare to see a film as surreal and repulsively engaging as this. Maniacal genius at work.

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