The movie screen does not rise on the empty stage and a second feature starts, also titled, “Journey to Paradise.” An expensive high-quality production in sharply focused black and white, resembling the cinematography of German Expressionism before the war, or the film noir after the war, like The Third Man. No impressionistic gauze on this clear lens, this is high contrasts of harsh light and deep shadows, disjointed, oddly angled, enigmatic, imagistic. Again: Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” is the dominant soundtrack.

In the establishing shot we see: the outside of Faustus house on an early spring morn—a dense white smoke plumes at its chimney in a chill air. Some students, whom we recognize, huddle outside his door, standing in the muddy track, and across the market square some other older men loiter at a tavern door, watching the house.

Helen comes out of the house and walks away hurriedly. As she travels away, the camera turns to see the groups of these students and other men, arriving from other directions, enter the house.

The camera looks toward the gravid clouds and the credits roll against the streak of falling rain: screenplay by Wagner; produced and directed by Mephistophiles; etc.

Mephistophiles provides the voice-over.