Product Description

Directed by Ingmar Bergman (Wild Strawberries, Autumn Sonata)--and featuring a cast of Bergman regulars--this psychological drama thrills the intellect and chills the soul. Max von Sydow (The Virgin Spring) presents a haunting figure as Vogler, a 19th-century hypnotist who hides behind a mask of illusion. Forced to flee Denmark, Vogler and his troupe arrive in Sweden only to be detained by the police. There, a rich merchant (Erland Josephson, Scenes from a Marriage) and a sadistic doctor (Gunnar Bjornstrand, The Seventh Seal) use Vogler to investigate whether or not supernatural powers exist. When they make a shambles of his performance, Vogler exacts a cruel revenge. Perhaps Bergman's most autobiographical film, The Magician reveals the great director's fear of humiliation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27420 in VHS
• Released on: 1996-10-29
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Original language: Swedish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Customer Reviews

Bergman's most enjoyable battle between reason and ...?
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.

Facing Reality
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.

Interesting interpretation of a classic story
I enjoyed this film immensely. I discovered this film by accident, yet I was surprised by Bergman's visual intensity and sly metaphor. Where one filmmaker might tell a simple tale of a magician maligned by suspicious citizens, Bergman takes this idea further. His is the story of a visionary, who having first gained the favor of a town, is later reviled for awakening their self-awareness. And, when the man is cast from town, seemingly as a penniless drifter, he creates his best illusion of all. Bergman is well-known for his use of relgious metaphor, and this film attests to his genius. I won't offer my conclusions, but leave this discovery to the pleasure of the viewer.