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The Magic Works of Ingmar Bergman is now located at www.bergmanorama.com. Please update your bookmarks. Thank you for visiting!
THE MAGICIAN
(1958)
Widely underrated, probably because of its strong comic elements and a tour-de-force scene derived from horror movie conventions, Bergman's chilling exploration of charlatanism is in fact one of his most genuinely enjoyable films.
Von Sydow is the 19th century magician/mesmerist Vogler, on the run with his troupe from debts and charges of blasphemy, whose diabolical talents are put to the test by the cynical rationalist Dr Vergerus (Bj�rnstrand); their clash results in humiliation, doubt, and death. Much of the film is devoted to wittily ironic sideswipes at bourgeois hypocrisy; more forceful, however, is the way Bergman transforms Vogler's ultimately futile act of revenge into a sequence of nightmarish suspense. (Geoff Andrew,
Time Out)
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| Original title: |
Ansiktet ["The face"] |
| Other title: |
The Face (UK) |
| Production: |
Svensk Filmindustri |
| Distribution: |
Svensk Filmindustri |
| Premiere: |
26 December 1958 (R�da Kvarn and Font�nen, Stockholm) |
| Running time: |
100 minutes |
| Language: |
Swedish |
| Filmed: |
at R�sunda Studios, Stockholm; from 30 June to 27 August 1958. |
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| CREDITS |
| Producer: |
Allan Ekelund |
| Director: |
Ingmar Bergman |
| Screenplay: |
Ingmar Bergman |
| Cinematography: |
Gunnar Fischer |
| Art Direction: |
P.A. Lundgren |
| Music: |
Erik Nordgren |
| Editor: |
Oscar Rosander |
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| REVIEWS |
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"This Ingmar Bergman film isn't a masterwork, or even a very good movie, but it is clearly a film made by a master. It has a fairy-tale atmosphere of expectation, like those stories that begin 'We started out to see the King, and along the way we met�' Then it becomes confused and argumentative. But the mysterious images of
Max von Sydow as the 19th-century mesmerist, Vogler, and
Ingrid Thulin as his assistant, Aman (Vogler's wife, Manda, in male disguise), carry so much latent charge of meaning that they dominate the loosely thrown-together material. Bergman labels the film a comedy, though audiences may not agree. It's a metaphysical gothic tale, with some low-comedy scenes and some grisly jokes involving an eyeball and a hand. The theme�magic versus rationalism or, if one prefers, faith versus scepticism, or art versus science, or illusion versus reality�is treated too theatrically to sustain such heavy-breathing dialogue as 'I always longed for a knife to cut away my tongue and my sex�to cut away all impurities.' There are times when one would be happy to hand Bergman that knife. He uses a 19th-century setting for the clich�s of the 20th-century�the man of science (Gunnar Bj�rnstrand as Verg�rus, the physician) is cold and sadistic, etc. Those who worry about the supposed division between emotion and intellect never leave one in doubt about which side they're on."
� Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies
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