Dominican College Grotto featured in 1916 silent film “Faust”

by Laurie Thompson

Beatriz Michelena & William Pike on location at Dominican College’s Grotto in 1916. The grotto was one of the setting used by the California Motion Picture Corporation in their silent film adaptation of “Faust.” Anne T. Kent California Room, Marin County Free Library.

“Faust,” based on the work by Goethe, was produced by San Rafael’s California Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC) in 1916. The CMPC went to great lengths to use costumes and sets which would accurately depict the medieval flavor of the story.

Both the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo and Dominican College’s “Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes” in San Rafael conveyed the aura that they were looking for and both places were featured extensively in the film.

The grotto at Dominican no longer looks as it did in 1916 but we found it depicted in Dominican’s 1916 catalog which you can see in the accompanying photograph. It’s clearly the setting for the publicity still of “Faust,” also depicted here.

Sadly not only is CMPC’s version of “Faust” no longer extant, it was never released to the public.

Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, Dominican College, 1916. Anne T. Kent California Room Collection

By late 1916 the CMPC was financially over-extended and unable to pay its bills. Leading lady Beatriz Michelena and her husband George Middleton -who had directed “Faust”- were owed back salaries and said they would resign as soon as the film was finished. The CMPC never completed the film and Michelena & Middleton officially left the film company in January of 1917.

All we have left today of “Faust” is a collection of stills and glass-plate negatives, some of which capture Marin County as it was in 1916. Several of these stills can be viewed on our online archive.

In 1931 an explosion and fire at the CMPC’s San Rafael studio destroyed all of the film in their vault, erasing much of their legacy.

Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.

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