An item in the 19 October 1927 Variety mentioned that German director F. W. Murnau recently traveled for four days with the Ringling-Barnum Circus, getting atmosphere for his new film, The Four Devils. In the original story, the circus was German, but "Murnau wants to Americanize that portion of the film. He may select some of the Big Show's performers to play in it, in Hollywood, after the circus closes its season in November at Sarasota, Fla." Two months alter, the 30 December 1927 Motion Picture News reported that Murnau had already chosen Mary Duncan as his "vampire" and three of the four performers who would play the "four devils," including Dione Ellis. However, Ellis, who also worked under the name Diane Ellis, was later replaced by Nancy Drexel.
       According to a studio directory in the 18 February 1928 Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World, production began 3 January 1928. The original stars were listed as Janet Gaynor, Charles Morton, Nancy Drexel, Barry Norton, Mary Duncan, and Farrell MacDonald. Four Devils was Murnau's second American film, as well as the first film in which Janet Gaynor's speaking voice was heard. She had also starred in Murnau's earlier Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, see entry), which critics now call one of the greatest American silent films.
       An item in the June 1928 Picture-Play Magazine revealed how Murnau was able to capture some of the trapeze work close-up with a new device called the "go-devil," which "moves the camera about in a very animated way, while a scene is being photographed." Resembling a steam shovel, the contraption, specially built for Murnau, "swings the camera about, and lifts it up and down, with an amazing rapidity. It is being used to photograph trapeze performances in action, and its gyrations are so swift that it can follow their every move and their flights through the air, without missing anything." The item added that the picture was rumored "already to have cost fully three quarters of a milllion."
       The September 1928 Movie Makers described how Murnau captured the proper crowd reaction to one of the trapeze artists, Janet Gaynor's "Marion," falling to the ground during her act: "Murnau had a theatre filled with extras. And he wanted to show by the expressions on the faces of the spectators what had happened. To do this there had to be a sudden shock, a rapid change of countenance—horror, fear, excitement! Time after time he tried to get exactly the right expression and each time he was dissatisfied." Finally, as the cameras clicked and the director and his assistants shouted the usual instructions, stagehands standing behind the extras fired fifty revolvers simultaneously—and Murnau got the shocked reactions he wanted.
       Four Devils first opened at the Gaiety Theatre in New York City on 3 October 1928 as a 120-minute silent movie with synchronized sound effects but no dialogue, and was reviewed in the 10 October 1928 Variety, which called it 4 Devils and praised the lavishness of the production and credited Ringling-Barnum for providing the real circus performers, including the animals. However, the 13 October 1928 Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World called for judicious editing of several dull sections. When Four Devils reopened for a second run in June 1929, Variety reviewed it a second time (19 June 1929), and explained that Fox added dialogue to "the last two reels virtually or 2,000 feet of the picture...[which] is 8,800 in complete footage." The running time of the film with the dialogue sequences was 125 minutes.
       The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of February 2021.