Mephisto

Based on Klaus Mann's novel, Mephisto details the rise of a Faustian character who figuratively sells his soul in exchange for greatness. Hendrik Hofgen (Klaus Maria Brandauer, offering an electric performance) is the star of a state-funded theater department who tires of his job. Like his friends, ...more

In films about wartime collaboration, Mephisto earns a special niche, because it also manages to include so many acute observations about the world of the theater, and, in particular, the delusions under which some artists operate. Hendrik Hofgen is an actor of some talent and even greater ambition. That ambition, to work on the best stages in Berlin after an apprenticeship in regional theater, also serves to blind him to the rise of Nazism and what it means to freedom-loving artists such as ...more