A portrait of the artist as a political opportunist, Mephisto tells of the rise of a provincial actor to the pinnacle of stardom in Nazi Germany. The film is based on the banned novel by Klaus Mann (son of Thomas Mann) which in turn was fashioned after the actor Gustav Grundgens, Klaus Mann's brother-in-law. But whereas Grundgens is said to have been a powerful actor (his all-business, black-gloved underworld chief in Fritz Lang's M gives us a hint of this), Klaus Maria Brandauer, in a much-hailed performance, plays Mann's Hendrik Hofgen for a chameleon-all sound and fury signifying ambition. Fittingly, it is in Goethe's Faust, which he dutifully remolds into a Romantic mode for his Nazi patrons, that he achieves stardom. Less subtle than Szabó's earlier, intimate portraits of lives shadowed by almost ineffable political realities in present-day Hungary; far grander in scale than his stunning chamber piece, Confidence, Mephisto, twenty years and sixteen films into his career, gave Szabó his first international success. The director's bravura craftsmanship is matched by Brandauer's almost enigmatic performance-at once heavy handed and mercurial-as a man who is excited by the very deceit of acting.