The Magician (The Criterion Collection) (1958)

An underrated film by the master Ingmar Bergman. Part horror, part comedy, part erotic, part

symbolic...it is a movie that should generate a lot of thinking when it is over.

Ostensibly it is a movie about the continuing conflict between faith and science...or reason and art but there are no quick answers. The character of Dr. Vogler may have been influenced by the myth and fact of Rasputin. Even the look is similar; Max Von Sydow is the "perfect choice of actor" in portraying this hypnotist, con-artist, or real magician.

I never had the sense that the "magic" was real, but persons behave as if the illusions were true. After a cynical medical officer humiliates Dr. Vogler, attempts to prove Vogler is nothing but a charlatan, the magician challenges him for a private performance. And in that performance Dr. Vogler dies and comes back to life again...the metaphor of Christ.

The nature of God requires us to keep on questioning. This was a theme in "The Seventh Seal' and it reappears in this film. Recommended...not as a masterpiece but as an important work of the director.

The correct title of this film is The Face. Since it partly deals with the way that artistic truth has to be packaged and promoted by hucksters it is not surprising that whoever distributed it in the US monkeyed around with Bergman's original title. More surprising is that an exceptionally stimulating, well-directed, well-written and finely acted work like this has only collected 3 Amazon reviews in the last 5 years. The actor's trade is here presented as closely akin to religion. Does the miraculous actually happen? Has it ever happened, even if only just once? Pleasure in art requires a suspension of disbelief: anyone, therefore, who has enjoyed a story, a picture, a film, has replaced reason with faith --if only for an hour or so. There are certainly some people, entire sects of the puritanically minded (including groups of scientists, rationalists, and so on) who hate art, presumably seeing it as inherently fraudulent. At the same time, as Holly Hunter has remarked, actors are only beggars and gypsies; beyond the bounds of respectable society. When this theatrical tale ends the god appears from the machine, nevertheless, and the suggestion is that miracles do occasionally happen. Anyone at all interested in this subject owes it to him/herself to see this subtle film, by an acknowledged master of the medium, and one of the greatest of the C20th.

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Ingmar Bergman's best films give the viewer the feeling of participating in a rite. Its rhythms are less those of conventional narrative, than of theatre or a religious procession, say. As with rites, the appeal is not to the viewer's intellect; their effect is both sensual and spiritual, troubling precisely because we can't put our finger on that appeal.

Of course, this requires a kind of faith, and is open to charges of manipulation, precisely the theme of 'The Magician', a splendid slice of unnerving Grand Guignol horror, where a rather academic argument between the Enlightenment values of sceince, reason and empiricism confront those of superstition, magic and the inexplicable. These latter values might be called medieval, pre-Renaissance, and we are reminded that the modern theatre developed in this period from the Church, from rites and passion plays. this is the kind of effect 'The Magician' has, visually and tonally.

The argument is not between the doctor and the mesmerist, but between the film's surface narrative (which, as an argument, promotes the predominance of reason) and the film's form (which destroys every attempt at argument). Everything within the film that seems to derive from supernatural forces can all be ascribed, more or less, to rational causes, for example psychological weakness; even if it is this very weakness, that border between what we know and what we can't know, in which the mesmerist exists. Although we might say 'Ah, it's only a delusion', the very fact that these self-generated delusions can convincingly take the place of safe, everyday reality, can become that reality, suggests the limits of rationality, without any recourse to the supernatural.

The shams of actors, con-men, misanthropes pretending to be mute, women pretending to be men might all be illusions which, once exposed, can restore the status quo; but once the idea has been suggested that a boundary can be crossed, that an illusion can be real, than a system based on those boundaries is undermined.

In a film where actors pretend to be what they're not, whose narrative proceeds like theatre and climaxes with a theatrical spectacle, Bergman's technique can be called a charade e.g. the haunting trip through an eerie forest, the fog streaming in the sunlight like a magical gateway; the terrifying attack on the doctor in a surrealist attic, are all an illusion to give us a sensation, but they also undeniably reveal a world for us that lives with us and which we never acknowledge. As ever with Bergman, it is only with acting, deception and illusion, not ational argument and empirical evidence, that we can even begin to approach the truth.

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With the exception for the abrupt and somehow rushed and unsatisfying ending, "Magician" is a typical (in a good sense of the word) Bergman's film that I liked a lot. I would call it "The Tortured Soul of an Artist or Smiles of a Summer Night meets Hour of the Wolf." I did not know what to expect from the film and was pleasantly surprised by an interesting story; impressive (especially in the earlier scenes in the woods) black and white cinematography; perfect blend of humor, intense drama, and mystery. Acting was perfect not a big surprise with the cast like that: Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bibi Andersson, and Erland Josephson. I'd like to mention Naima Wifstrand as Granny Vogler what a great actress and what a character she stepped out from the pages of the fairy tales, the old witch, wise and powerful; she also provides many comical scenes.

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The three films that Ingmar Bergman produced at the close of the 1950s -DET SJUNDE INSEGLET, SMULTRONSTAELLET and JUNGFRUKAELLAN -tower so high in his output that one might forget that these were not his only productions of the era. ANSIKTET ("The Face", released in English-speaking markets as THE MAGICIAN) from 1958 is one of his lesser-known films.

In mid-19th century Sweden the magician Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max van Sydow) goes from town to town promising people cures for their ailments and performing magic tricks, including what was the sensation of the time, hypnosis. He is joined by his tout (Aake Fridell), his "ward" Mr. Aman (Ingrid Thulin) and his "grandmother" and the troupe's maker of patent medicine (Naima Wifstrand). After fleeing the law after a performance in one town, they pass through the forest and enter another community. Here they are detained by the authorities, so that the physician Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand), the consul Egerman (Erland Josephson) can decide a wager on whether Vogler's tricks are real spiritual powers or scientifically explainable illusions.

While ANSIKTET should not be overlooked for fans of Bergman, I think it's fair that the film is not ranked among Bergman's greatest achievements. Characterization is pretty slim -we get no idea of why Vogler and his companion chose this life, and Vergerus is so shallow that Gunnar Bjornstrand seems wasted. And had the film ended three minutes earlier it would have been one of Bergman's more powerful conclusions, but instead we get a completely unexpected happy ending that just seems lame. Much of the middle part of the film depends on sex jokes that are funny at times, but I suspect anyone who knows Bergman's great output will continuously be thinking that he's capable of so much more than this.

Still, ANSIKTET does have a generally thought-provoking dramatic arc, and some moments will prove memorable. I especially admired the battle between Vergerus and Vogler and the magician's breakdown (funny how his temperment appropriately changes with his clothes in this scene). It's a pity that Criterion hasn't released the film for the US market as Bergman's major films, but if you can view the UK import, it's worthwhile.

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