Mephisto

Mephisto Nazism and art. Can these two themes be combined to create a high quality movie' Possibly. That is what director Istvan Szabo did. He directed the movie Mephisto in 1981, a movie about the life of a German actor during Nazi’s rule pre-World War II. The movie was based on Klaus Mann’s novel with the same title. The story of the main character in the movie, Hendrik Hoefgen, was similar to Faust. He is willing to sacrifice everything including his ideals in return for a successful career as an actor. He saw that opportunity coming by collaborating with the regime in power. He therefore formed an alliance with the Nazis to achieve that. The Nazis offered him a glorious artistic life and he in turn would be their public propaganda tool in the artistic world. A big dilemma emerged from this movie. Does artists have a moral responsibility to the society through his artistic works or should they be concerned only with the aesthetics aspect of their profession' Like any other occupations, artists ought to care about how his works would affect the welfare of the society and its morality, and even more mephisto, hoefgen, artists, himself, faust, movie, society, moral, should, people, art, nazi, human, devil, works, life, very, time, success, public, nazis, general, career, one, artistic, actor, power, own, character, respect, real, play, others, nazi’s, however