SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 203 - The Magician (1958)

europe1

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Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.
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Our Director

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INGMAR BERGMAN was a Swedish director, writer, and producer who worked in film, television, theatre and radio. He is recognized as one of the most accomplished and influential auteurs of all time, and is most famous for films such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972) and Fanny and Alexander (1982). Also well-regarded are works such as Winter Light (1963), The Silence (1963), and Scenes from a Marriage (1973).

Bergman directed over sixty films and documentaries for cinematic release and for television, most of which he also wrote. He also directed over 170 plays. From 1953 he forged a powerful creative partnership with his full-time cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Among his company of actors were Harriet and Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Björnstrand, Erland Josephson, Ingrid Thulin and Max von Sydow. Most of his films were set in Sweden, and numerous films from Through a Glass Darkly (1961) onward were filmed on the island of Fårö. His work often dealt with death, illness, faith, betrayal, bleakness and insanity.

Philip French referred to Bergman as "one of the greatest artists of the 20th century [...] he found in literature and the performing arts a way of both recreating and questioning the human condition." Mick LaSalle argued, "Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce in literature, Ingmar Bergman strove to capture and illuminate the mystery, ecstasy and fullness of life, by concentrating on individual consciousness and essential moments. His achievement is unsurpassed."

Our Star
Ming the Merciless

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Film Overview



Premise: A traveling magician and his assistants are persecuted by authorities in Sweden of the 19th century. Their captures, however, didn't bring victory to those in power.

Budget: Probably something Swedish

Box Office: Paltry by Hollywood standards

Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)

* The character of Vogler was based on Bergman himself.​


* The character of Vergerus was based on critic Harry Schein who disliked Bergman's work.

* The original Swedish title is "Ansiktet" which means "the face". It was released theatrically in the United Kingdom as "The Face".

* Avid Bergman fan Woody Allen says this film is his recommended starting point for watching Bergman.

Members: @europe1 @Doc Whorfin @MusterX @FrontNakedChoke @Scott Parker 27 @Yotsuya @jei @LHWBelt @cheesus @HARRISON_3 @Bubzeh @moreorless87 @HenryFlower @Zer
 
Is this gonna be like one of those wizard threads WoW used to post?:eek:
 
Is this gonna be like one of those wizard threads WoW used to post?:eek:

You'll just have to watch and see if this wizard offers some dude $2m to live inside Hope Solo's vagina for a year or something
 
You'll just have to watch and see if this wizard offers some dude $2m to live inside Hope Solo's vagina for a year or something

Swap Hope Solo for Jodi Arias, and I'll do it for free!
 
Man this was a movie that faffed about!

It's like they couldn't make a full 90 minutes movie so they just shoot rustic servants being jolly and horny for 45 minutes to have something to film. It really feels like we have two movies here and they clash pretty garishly. There is a good movie in here but it's buried under a ton of trash.

But theme-wise, I think this movie is an old-case of legerdemain, an underhanded switcheroo if you will. From the get-go, we're told that it's going to be another classical slugfest between science and the supernatural. Is the phantom-realm real, and all that. The Magician and his troupe are invited into the aristocrats home solely to answer this question.

However, during the movie's run-time, it becomes more a film about callousness and inhumanity dished out by the upper-classes towards people like the protagonists.

Consider this. In the ending. When Vogler has pulled off the most masterful con imaginable, when he has practically scared Vergerus into believing in the supernatural — what happens? In the very next scene, we see him scurrying after Vergerus and pitifully begging for payment. The power he held as a ghoul is wasted by his reality as a starving artist with the whiplash of a car-crash. All that science-vs-belief humbug means squat when you have mouths to feed. Having some cantankerous opinion on the subject is the privilege of the rich.

Throughout the film, Vergerus and the Police Superintendent actively mock and disparage the performers, thinking themselves intellectually superior when what the troupe only really wants to awe and entertain. Vergerus desire to solve this Metaphysical question isn't so much based on scientific curiosity as it's a desire to dominate and lord over others. He wants to fuck the wife. He wants to humiliate the cast. He fetishes their "prideful bearings." As soon as Vogler "dies" he wants to cut him open so to figure out how he ticks, have a morbid peek at his brain without any sympathy towards his family.

Throughout the film, all of this inhumanity weights much more than the Supernatural-vs-Science question that Vergerus purports to want to know. It's more about how upper-class callousness and close-mindedness forces people to live in misery, humiliation and poverty.

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As for this movies opinions on the Supernatural-vs-Science, I think it's best summarized with that drunken actor whom they encounter in the beginning. He says that he can see beyond death... and then dies. Metaphysical truths are unknowable. Lucid only to the dead.

Btw, that characters last name "Spegel" translates as "Mirror". Which is a neat bit of foreshadowing since he essentially becomes Vogler's reflection at the end.

Also, lol at anyone mistaking Ingrid Thulin for a male.
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That scene where the Police Superintendents wife is hypnotized was pretty damn funny.

"He visits whorehouses to eat like a pig and farts at the table!"

"Dear! Think of the children!"

"Oh? I suppose some of them could be his. They're pretty fat and ugly!"

<45>


PS: Does anyone else think the ending may be a dream sequence? It suddenly switches from bitter rain to shining summer and suddenly all of the protagonists' problems are washed away by emissaries from the King. The filmmaking even radically shifts and there is a carnival-like soundtrack playing. I'm not sure just something I thought of.
 
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Really enjoyable movie. Not a bigtime classic like Wild Strawberries for example, but wonderful telling of the down-and-out chapter of magician’s troupe. Bergman changes styles with ease going from farce to naturalism to horror and so on as do the characters who he’s portraying. And that’s what it seems to take to make a living as an artist. Not everyone wants true miracles and some even deny them all together, so the magician needs to adapt to make a living. Better to dish out the love potions than take people to the true twilight zone where ugly truths could be revealed. But magicians have big egoes, so they won’t hold back forever...
 
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Great review / recap @europe1 - can't really beat that. You nailed pretty much everything... So I'm going to piggy back onto it if that's okay! :D

Also worth noting that after seeing how the wifeys fall at the feet of magicians, I'm considering ditching the IT field and re-training!

Man this was a movie that faffed about!

It's like they couldn't make a full 90 minutes movie so they just shoot rustic servants being jolly and horny for 45 minutes to have something to film. It really feels like we have two movies here and they clash pretty garishly. There is a good movie in here but it's buried under a ton of trash.

Agreed. I just thought many of these scenes where the guys selling the love potions struck me as comedy filler scenes. I did find myself sat wondering when it would focus back on the main dude and his magic. Him and the wife were the MVPs.

Vogler all dressed up reminded me of Adam Driver but then took the wig and small beard off and bam, he'd mysteriously aged about 20 years!

I can't work out whether I loved the scene of Vogler in the bedroom with his wife and that other guy or whether I thought it was rubbish. I think I loved it.

<FutbolThink>

However, during the movie's run-time, it becomes more a film about callousness and inhumanity dished out by the upper-classes towards people like the protagonists.

Consider this. In the ending. When Vogler has pulled off the most masterful con imaginable, when he has practically scared Vergerus into believing in the supernatural — what happens? In the very next scene, we see him scurrying after Vergerus and pitifully begging for payment. The power he held as a ghoul is wasted by his reality as a starving artist with the whiplash of a car-crash. All that science-vs-belief humbug means squat when you have mouths to feed. Having some cantankerous opinion on the subject is the privilege of the rich.

Felt sorry for them when they started getting truly mocked towards the end. And then I was shook at how Vogler started begging for the cash after the performance had ended. Didn't think that was in his character at all.

PS: Does anyone else think the ending may be a dream sequence? It suddenly switches from bitter rain to shining summer and suddenly all of the protagonists' problems are washed away by emissaries from the King. The filmmaking even radically shifts and there is a carnival-like soundtrack playing. I'm not sure just something I thought of.

Good point... I noticed the weather change from each scenes and found it odd, but didn't really put two and two together to come out with a dream sequence... I sincerely hope it wasn't!
 
It's like they couldn't make a full 90 minutes movie so they just shoot rustic servants being jolly and horny for 45 minutes to have something to film. It really feels like we have two movies here and they clash pretty garishly. There is a good movie in here but it's buried under a ton of tras
Nope, it was both a stylistic and a thematic choice giving the movie it's upstairs, downstairs -dynamic. You simply seem to cherrypick the sections that support your read and dismiss the rest.

However, during the movie's run-time, it becomes more a film about callousness and inhumanity dished out by the upper-classes towards people like the protagonists.
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Consider this. In the ending. When Vogler has pulled off the most masterful con imaginable, when he has practically scared Vergerus into believing in the supernatural — what happens? In the very next scene, we see him scurrying after Vergerus and pitifully begging for payment. The power he held as a ghoul is wasted by his reality as a starving artist with the whiplash of a car-crash. All that science-vs-belief humbug means squat when you have mouths to feed. Having some cantankerous opinion on the subject is the privilege of the rich.
Volgers are not the starving poor. They used to own an estate in France, but sold it and bought horses and the carriage. Why? Probably because of their ambition and adventurous nature and prospect of getting even richer.

Throughout the film, Vergerus and the Police Superintendent actively mock and disparage the performers, thinking themselves intellectually superior when what the troupe only really wants to awe and entertain. Vergerus desire to solve this Metaphysical question isn't so much based on scientific curiosity as it's a desire to dominate and lord over others. He wants to fuck the wife. He wants to humiliate the cast. He fetishes their "prideful bearings." As soon as Vogler "dies" he wants to cut him open so to figure out how he ticks, have a morbid peek at his brain without any sympathy towards his family.
Well put about Vergeus! He's on an arrogant power trip and loving it! I think you simplify troupe's motivations a bit though. They have their own ambitions that go beyond being simple entertainers and their own power trip they try to keep going.

Throughout the film, all of this inhumanity weights much more than the Supernatural-vs-Science question that Vergerus purports to want to know. It's more about how upper-class callousness and close-mindedness forces people to live in misery, humiliation and poverty.
Both folks upstairs and downstairs are portrayed individuals. They don't act on unified on class front. Egermans for example are clearly more drawn to the supernatural and want to believe.

As for this movies opinions on the Supernatural-vs-Science, I think it's best summarized with that drunken actor whom they encounter in the beginning. He says that he can see beyond death... and then dies. Metaphysical truths are unknowable. Lucid only to the dead.

Btw, that characters last name "Spegel" translates as "Mirror". Which is a neat bit of foreshadowing since he essentially becomes Vogler's reflection at the end.
Well said again and thanks for the insight about the name! I know enough Swedish that I should have picked that up. I think I'll need to rewatch Spegel's scenes again now that I feel like I have a pretty good overall read on Vogler.

PS: Does anyone else think the ending may be a dream sequence? It suddenly switches from bitter rain to shining summer and suddenly all of the protagonists' problems are washed away by emissaries from the King. The filmmaking even radically shifts and there is a carnival-like soundtrack playing. I'm not sure just something I thought of.
No because similar stylistic switches were plentiful. Loved the ending though. Volger troupe left heading for the big time leaving the petty providencial bourgeois behind!
 
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* The character of Vogler was based on Bergman himself.
* The character of Vergerus was based on critic Harry Schein who disliked Bergman's work.​
This matches pretty damn well with my read. :)
 
I can't work out whether I loved the scene of Vogler in the bedroom with his wife and that other guy or whether I thought it was rubbish. I think I loved it.

FutbolThink
Great scene. I think that sealed the deal that Vogler would make his stand against this asshole Vergerus.
 
Really enjoyable movie. Not a bigtime classic like Wild Strawberries for example, but wonderful telling of the down-and-out chapter of magician’s troupe. Bergman changes styles with ease going from farce to naturalism to horror and so on as do the characters who he’s portraying. And that’s what it seems to take to make a living as an artist. Not everyone wants true miracles and some even deny them all together, so the magician needs to adapt to make a living. Better to dish out the love potions than take people to the true twilight zone where ugly truths could be revealed. But magicians have big egoes, so they won’t hold back forever...

I didn't really have a problem with the shifts in tone as you say they came across as a quite believable reflection of the different things people want from the troupe rather than the film itself shifting massively, I'm guessing part of the choice of plot/setting was exactly so Bergman could have a cross section of society showing how it related to them. Also seems like it was a good way to get his two favourite subjects in religion and the artist into one plot with the magician arguably reflecting both, both religion under attack from rationalism and art being viewed in purely a critical/dismissive fashion. That he showed the magicians projector was I'm guessing looking to draw parallels to himself as a film maker? the troupe itself perhaps a reflection of falling outs and shifts in his circle of regulars, makes a very prescient one if so the way he has Bibi Andersson's character join up at the end.

Honestly with Bergman I have tended to limit myself to a few of the major films, not just because he goes over similar ground a lot but because something like Persona is so rewatchable so it was nice to see something a little bit different, as you say not really a classic but I don't think really aiming for that level. I think you can see that he brings out his strengths when there really needed, the film really comes alive in sections like the night at the major or the deception in the attic.

I'm wondering actually whether this film was the reason why Von Sydow was cast as Ming? someone remembered his look here and how close it was to the character?
 
Honestly with Bergman I have tended to limit myself to a few of the major films, not just because he goes over similar ground a lot but because something like Persona is so rewatchable so it was nice to see something a little bit different, as you say not really a classic but I don't think really aiming for that level.
I've been a bit hesitant to watch the major Bergman classics as they tend to be about religion (I'm not so interested) and death (I'm too young to worry about). I only remember watching the two sex comedies Smiles on a Summer Night and All Those Women past twenty years. As I'm closing 50 The Magician served as a nice intermediator between the lighter and the more serious works.
 
I've been a bit hesitant to watch the major Bergman classics as they tend to be about religion (I'm not so interested) and death (I'm too young to worry about). I only remember watching the two sex comedies Smiles on a Summer Night and All Those Women past twenty years. As I'm closing 50 The Magician served as a nice intermediator between the lighter and the more serious works.

I'm guessing that's part of why Persona is such a favourite for many as its something a bit different from the typical religion/death focus.
 
I'm guessing that's part of why Persona is such a favourite for many as its something a bit different from the typical religion/death focus.
I starter to watch Persona few years ago but could not get very far at all as it seemed too avantgarde for my expectations which were locked in his 50's stuff. Naturally I intend to give it another shot.
 
Man this was a movie that faffed about!

It's like they couldn't make a full 90 minutes movie so they just shoot rustic servants being jolly and horny for 45 minutes to have something to film. It really feels like we have two movies here and they clash pretty garishly. There is a good movie in here but it's buried under a ton of trash.

Lies! Blasphemy! Nothing from Bergman is trash, you heathen :mad:

On the subject of "two movies" allegedly "clashing" - and "garishly," to boot - I am with Yotsuya:

Nope, it was both a stylistic and a thematic choice giving the movie it's upstairs, downstairs -dynamic.

To cite Frank Gado's excellent book The Passion of Ingmar Bergman, this dynamic is a recurrent structural motif throughout Bergman's work:

"The erotic revels among the servants [which seem like] irrelevant comic intrusion upon very serious themes [actually] operate as counterpoint to the tortured eroticism expressed in the upstairs bedrooms. The former, which implies an arc of life extending from the callow young lovers, through the middle-aged Tubal and the plump cook, to wise old Grandmother reassuring the youngest servant that she will experience the fullness of womanhood in her turn, is natural, uncomplicated, and joyous; the latter exhibits the suffering of sexually twisted lives. (A similar contrast, springing from the same psychological source, can be found in Smiles of a Summer Night.)"

Consider this. In the ending. When Vogler has pulled off the most masterful con imaginable, when he has practically scared Vergerus into believing in the supernatural — what happens? In the very next scene, we see him scurrying after Vergerus and pitifully begging for payment. The power he held as a ghoul is wasted by his reality as a starving artist with the whiplash of a car-crash. All that science-vs-belief humbug means squat when you have mouths to feed. Having some cantankerous opinion on the subject is the privilege of the rich.

In line with Yotsuya's point that this was directed by Bergman and not Marx, alternatively, in keeping with the artist theme, consider another portion of Gado's reading of this film:

"Vogler suffers profoundly, not because he is out of favor with the audience but because he wants to perform real miracles - just as, for Bergman, the magic of art lay in its promise of changing reality. The magician who reveals that his resurrection was only an illusion is finally Bergman himself, confessing that Frid's exultant cry at the end of Smiles of a Summer Night, the "meaningful deed" insuring continuance of hope in The Seventh Seal, and the absolution Isak seems to attain with his last vision in Wild Strawberries were, after all, only tricks. That he then ends this film with another Voglerian trick is anything but an expression of confidence in his artistic magic. Ironically, at the moment Bergman was being hailed as the one true genius the cinema had produced, he was entering a crisis."

Also, lol at anyone mistaking Ingrid Thulin for a male.

I often think that with Cheng Pei-pei in Come Drink With Me, as well.

PS: Does anyone else think the ending may be a dream sequence? It suddenly switches from bitter rain to shining summer and suddenly all of the protagonists' problems are washed away by emissaries from the King. The filmmaking even radically shifts and there is a carnival-like soundtrack playing. I'm not sure just something I thought of.
Good point... I noticed the weather change from each scenes and found it odd, but didn't really put two and two together to come out with a dream sequence... I sincerely hope it wasn't!

For one more citation from Gado's book, he connects the ending of The Magician to the ending of Wild Strawberries:

"Once one perceives the inner similarity of Vogler's ordeal to Isak Borg's, the similarity of the "happy endings" Bergman imposes on the two films becomes apparent. Just as Isak's search for father and forgiveness ends in a dream of reconciliation, the guilt that underlies Vogler's humiliation is providentially absolved by the summons from the king - clearly a father figure. Moreover, the regeneration symbolized by the conjunction of the approaching death of Isak, who is "guilty of guilt," with the vision of Sigbritt's baby, Isak's innocent other self, also marks the ending of [The Magician]: Vergerus's autopsy report and the king's letter bear the same date - July 14, Bergman's own birthday.

The very similarity of the two conclusions, however, calls attention to a most significant difference. Although the serenity visited on Isak conflicts with the import of the dramatic action that leads up to it, Bergman fogs the inconsistency in a sentimental cloud. In contrast, [The Magician] flaunts the artificiality of the magician's deliverance; it is [...] "utterly fantastic" [...] Seeing no solution to his personal dilemma, [Bergman] cannot bring his fiction to a satisfactory close, [so] he invents a preposterous happy ending that mocks his despair as a man and his failure as an artist."

In short, the ending is supposed to be strange - not because it is a dream, however, which would be an "acceptable" deviation from reality, but precisely because it is not a dream, which foregrounds the fact that it is an "unacceptable" contrivance due to an inability on Bergman's part as the artist to deal with the reality of the film's narrative (and Bergman's personal) dilemma.

Honestly with Bergman I have tended to limit myself to a few of the major films

Out of curiosity, what are the films of his that you've seen? Also, why would you want to limit your Bergman viewing o_O

I've been a bit hesitant to watch the major Bergman classics

For fuck's sake, you, too, Yotsuya? What's with you people and the imposition of Bergman viewing restrictions? Next to Kubrick and Hitchcock he's the fucking GOAT!

they tend to be about religion (I'm not so interested) and death (I'm too young to worry about).

Documentaries are where you need to actually be interested in the subject matter. Movies are about the artistic renderings of stories. And Bergman's artistic renderings of stories, whether about religion or death or whatever else, are among the greatest in film history. So start watching them!

I only remember watching the two sex comedies Smiles on a Summer Night and All Those Women past twenty years. As I'm closing 50 The Magician served as a nice intermediator between the lighter and the more serious works.

Same question as I asked moreorless: What are the films of his that you've seen?

I starter to watch Persona few years ago but could not get very far at all as it seemed too avantgarde for my expectations which were locked in his 50's stuff. Naturally I intend to give it another shot.

Definitely give it another shot, and do it knowing that Bergman had a modernist phase from Persona through The Passion of Anna where he was doing a lot of Brechtian/Godardian stuff. It was all still thoroughly Bergmanesque, but the aesthetic and narrational devices were often explicitly modernist.

IMO, just like Kubrick showed up and made The Shining and blew everyone who was making horror movies at the time out of the water, Bergman showed up and made Persona and blew everyone who was making avant garde shit at the time out of the water :cool:
 
Out of curiosity, what are the films of his that you've seen? Also, why would you want to limit your Bergman viewing o_O

Seventh Seal, WIld Strawberrys, Glass Darkly, Persona, Scenes from a Marriage and vague memories of Fanny and Alexander along time ago on TV.

I wouldn't say that's really a self imposed limit so much as what I'v gotten around to, generally my viewing often tends towards a lot of rewatches of my favourites and I tend to flit around a lot in terms of directors/styles rather than going on big drives of watching everything a director has done. With Bergman as well he's not really someone you watch casually is he?
 
Same question as I asked moreorless: What are the films of his that you've seen?
In my aimless youth Bergman was the first arthouse director I got into. I watched with ease about a dozen of his movies. Then I tried to do the same with Godard and could hardly get through two movies before giving up. That French fuck basically killed my general curiosity in art house cinema for decades. For some reason I tried to give Godard another chance every now and then, but never finishing another movie by him, where as I think I felt like I kind of had Bergaman figured out, so I didn't have a need to dig deeper until now, that I'm middle aged and death is approaching and I can actually benefit from his morbid stuff.
 
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In my aimless youth Bergman was the first arthouse director I got into. I watched with ease about a dozen of his movies. Then I tried to do the same with Godard and could hardly get through two movies before giving up. That French fuck basically killed my general curiosity in art house cinema for decades. For some reason I tried to give Godard another chance every now and then, but never finishing another movie by him, where as I think I felt like Ikind of had Bergaman figured out, so I didn't have a need to dig deeper until now, that I'm middle aged and death is approaching and I can actually benefit from his morbid stuff.

I'd guess I'm a bit lucky that I didn't bother with Godard in my impressionable youth, I think I saw Bande Apart once but really didn't start watching his stuff until the last decade and with much less expectation, viewed in that fashion I didn't have much of a problem with it, just taking something like Pierrot Le Fou as a wacky meta division rather than a pillar of cinema, I must admit I do like Contempt though as it actually bothers to take itself fairly seriously and has more polish. I'd guess its not uncommon these days to rank Antonioni and Fellini much more highly than Godard?

Bergman again I think part of the issue is how similar a lot of his acclaimed stuff is and how much of it there is, makes my progress relatively slow, I think I have a DVD of the Virgin Spring knocking around somewhere I haven't gotten around to yet.
 
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I must admit I do like Contempt though as it actually bothers to take itself fairly seriously and has more polish.
I almost wrote rant mode about my contempt for this movie, but contained myself not to get distracted from the excellence of Bergman. :D
 
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