It all comes back to Mephisto

I admit I am jumping the gun on my postulation a bit here and I won't be able to really produce an analysis until I see the film but I assert that thus far, the image of Heath Ledger's Joker in the initial publicity looks positively Mephistophelian. What cemented this notion in my mind was a scene from the preview where the Joker is either driving a car or riding in a car laughing. The contortion of his face reminded me very much of a scene in Murnau's Faust when Mephisto has set Faust up and laughed at his misery. Mephisto goads Faust into murdering Gretchen's brother and runs through the streets crying "Murder" and laughing through it all. Lotte Eisner describes Emil Jannings as looking like a screeching cat on its haunches in that scene and that is an apt verbalization of it. The face Heath Ledger makes in the car is so incredibly similar. I tried to find a photo of it online but could not. I plan to write something more detailed on this after I see the movie, of course. But you can get some ideas of the similarities by looking at the basic make-up and facial expressions: