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

[Ace of Spade]

NOTE to NON-MEMBERS: Interested in joining the SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB? Shoot me a PM for more info!

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

​

What's up Europe1? I'm starting another "Guess the Movie" game thread. If I remember correctly you were the winner of the last game we had years ago. Do you want to defend your title? We already have 5 people who are ready to play.

Here's the thread asking who wants to play... https://forums.sherdog.com/threads/...he-movie-with-points-high-score-wins.4099554/

 

[Yotsuya]

I watched parts of The Magician again and made few more observations:
-Not sure anymore that granny's love potion business was all scam, though much of it obviously was.
-Regarding Bergman using religious themes, the plot was kind of variation of Christ before Pilate scenario.

I also found some interesting stuff reading the Criterion forum discussion
-The ending could have been a mass hypnosis illusion by Albert to get the troupe released.
-Best write-up there: "THE MAGICIAN has the aura of a fable (quite similar to THE SEVENTH SEAL I suppose) and is quite direct in framing the story as a religious allegory. However, the aspect that really makes the film work for me is the way Bergman reveals the psychology of the audience; they simultaneously want to believe in the illusion and destroy it at the same time. This particular psychology has always been attached to the art of magic as magicians know that an audience will delight in a trick, then demand to know how it was accomplished, even grow angry or threatening if the illusion is very convincing. Bergman demonstrates how this trait can be found in all belief. The audience in THE MAGICIAN are desperate to divine the truth from illusion; Vogler and co. are weary of entering the debate, but it's the only way for them to earn enough to survive. What Vogler and co. represent to the house of Egerman is the opportunity to act on their desires normally kept in check by decorum and tradition (for example, the constable's wife feels free to say what she truly thinks about her husband under the guise of being hypnotized). Their belief in the potential of Vogler's magic is what allows them to act out, but they aren't reacting to the real Vogler, only to what they perceive him to be. I found it quite sad when Vogler, his make-up removed, approaches Egerman's wife reminding her that the night before she considered him a soul mate as the wife pulls away in fear. As the enigmatic and silent "magician", Vogler is alluring, an instigator who can inspire and persuade; the real Vogler has much less power. Von Sydow performs this role beautifully. You can see the combination of relief and disappointment in his eyes at the film's end; the king has given him a reprieve, but Vogler knows that what is being asked for is not the truth but the illusion."

 

[Bullitt68]

Okay, after a few days and just in time for this thread to be unstickied, I can finally finish the conversation that I started

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?

I get the rewatching favorites bit - though, for the watching casually bit, I chuckled at the thought of you, who loves Tarkovsky and specifically Andrei Rublev so much, complaining that Bergman is demanding

As for your Bergman list, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Persona are what I consider to be the three "must-sees." If you're not into Bergman after one/all of those, then you're probably not going to be - or else, at the very least, you might enjoy his other stuff but you won't rate him as one of the GOAT. So even if you never explore Bergman's career further, you've at least checked off the major titles and so can settle with an informed opinion on him as an artist.

Regarding the "big" stuff that is still out there for you to check out if you wanted to, there is of course the subsequent two films after Through a Glass Darkly in his "Silence of God" trilogy, Winter Light and The Silence. There's also The Virgin Spring. But you might actually enjoy watching his lesser-known stuff.

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.

It certainly was interesting to see Bergman almost half making a genre film, I have been tempted to try The Serpents Egg despite the bad reviews simply to see how he'd do more overt horror.

Based on these comments, I'd actually recommend the following.

Summer Interlude: This IMO is Bergman's first legitimately great film (he himself considered it a turning point in his film career). It's not a masterpiece, but it's several levels above anything that he'd done before and it stands as the best thing that he'd do until The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries brought him into masterpiece/GOAT territory. Most people will point to Summer with Monika and Smiles of a Summer Night for early Bergman's best. But those people are wrong. Summer Interlude is where it's at. It's a beautiful movie about youth and young love, loss, and nostalgia. It's short and simple yet moving and profound. And despite featuring some characteristically gloomy death stuff, in its most joyous moments it's a film that I'd honestly describe as bursting with life.

The Devil's Eye: You talked about Bergman doing genre pieces. Well, this is a Bergman-style romcom. This might honestly be his most underrated film in terms of how great it is relative to how few people have ever even acknowledged its existence let alone talked about how great it is. Don Juan is in Hell and he is sent back to Earth by Satan to corrupt a pure and jubilant virgin (played by Bibi Andersson in my favorite role of hers after Persona) by seducing her before her wedding - only things get complicated when Don Juan falls in love with her. It's fun and it's smart and I can't recommend it enough.

Shame: This has always felt to me like what Children of Men wanted to be. This is a raw and rough story about married musicians on the outs having to deal with each other and their crumbling society in the midst of a civil war. It gets some praise, but this is also a criminally underrated film with respect to how amazing I think it is, from the performances to Sven Nykvist's fascinatingly beautiful-yet-trying-to-be-unaesthetic B&W cinematography to Bergman's not preachy but still thought-provoking meditation on war's effects on societies and individuals. Another one that I highly recommend.

Autumn Sonata: I already recommended this one, but I'll list it again. Another very simple and straightforward film that packs one hell of a punch courtesy of the great dialogue and the powerhouse performances.

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.

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?

Now, when it comes to Godard, I'm with you, Yotsuya. He didn't kill my interest in the arthouse, but he did set me back on my French New Wave curiosity by a few years. I just don't get him or anyone who likes him. My fucking MA advisor wrote a book on Godard - and not even the "good" stuff, but his later garbage! There are aspects to him and his films that are interesting, but there is not a single film of his that I enjoy or consider good, whereas there are plenty that I think flat-out suck.

To your question, moreorless, I think that, in academia, at least, Godard is still the king of the hill. Over time, Fellini's reputation seems to have fallen. Scholars hardly ever even mention him or his films anymore. And much the same for Antonioni. The whole modernist thing has sort of been filed away in the "Past" folder. Bergman still gets play, Tarkovsky still gets play, Kurosawa and Ozu get play, but nobody seems to really care much anymore for the mid-20th Century French and Italian crews.

Speaking for myself, I'm not a big fan of either Antonioni or Fellini - I'd rather watch the films of Rossellini and De Sica any day of the week - but by the same token I'd rather watch their films than anything from Godard. Antonioni has always bummed me out because I love his aesthetic sensibility but the films themselves are just fucking unwatchable to me. I never don't fast-forward. I just can't do it. As for Fellini, I genuinely love I Vitelloni and its late companion piece Amarcord, I admire La Strada but I don't love it, and I enjoy Nights of Cabiria as sort of a more palatable La Strada. But I have no use for the Fellini of La Dolce Vita or 8 1/2 and I have even less use for the Fellini of Satyricon or Juliet of the Spirits.

Surveying the vast terrain of "the arthouse" from the 1950s through the 1970s, Bergman and Kurosawa are the titans IMO. Everyone else has their good points and bad points, their interesting points and their stupid points, but nothing and no one has anything on Bergman and Kurosawa.

 

[moreorless87]

I get the rewatching favorites bit - though, for the watching casually bit, I chuckled at the thought of you, who loves Tarkovsky and specifically Andrei Rublev so much, complaining that Bergman is demanding

As for your Bergman list, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Persona are what I consider to be the three "must-sees." If you're not into Bergman after one/all of those, then you're probably not going to be - or else, at the very least, you might enjoy his other stuff but you won't rate him as one of the GOAT. So even if you never explore Bergman's career further, you've at least checked off the major titles and so can settle with an informed opinion on him as an artist.

Regarding the "big" stuff that is still out there for you to check out if you wanted to, there is of course the subsequent two films after Through a Glass Darkly in his "Silence of God" trilogy, Winter Light and The Silence. There's also The Virgin Spring. But you might actually enjoy watching his lesser-known stuff..

I wouldn't really put someone like Tarkovsky as "casual" viewing either although actually I do find something like Rublev can be watched somewhat in that fashion being mostly a film focused on tone. You do have a pretty big difference between them in terms of output of course with Bergman having almost 10 times more films.

 

[Yotsuya]

Now, when it comes to Godard, I'm with you, Yotsuya. He didn't kill my interest in the arthouse, but he did set me back on my French New Wave curiosity by a few years. I just don't get him or anyone who likes him. My fucking MA advisor wrote a book on Godard - and not even the "good" stuff, but his later garbage! There are aspects to him and his films that are interesting, but there is not a single film of his that I enjoy or consider good, whereas there are plenty that I think flat-out suck.

One could say The Magician is very post-modern, but it’s not lazy like much of the new wave stuff. Bergman takes revenge on people he loaths by making choises as story teller, but none of the tools he uses are very obvoius and neither is the outcome. One has to dig deep in layers to figure the movie out and even then nothing is objective.

I know new wave is about spontanous film making and there’s charm in that, but I just don’t see it going well with intellectual content, so when it comes to spontaneity and improvisation I prefer Jess Franco. And yet, as Godard’s been sandwiched between two conversations I’ve had lately I’m feeling like giving Alphaville the third chance. Go figure...

 

[Yotsuya]

To cite Frank Gado's excellent book The Passion of Ingmar Bergman

I've been skimming through almost a dozen of Bergman books lately for more insight about The Magician and this turned out to be the best. Gado agrees with me that opening premise of the movie is a variation of Christ before Pilate -theme and he finds a lot of other Christ-symbolism too like the driver being kind on Judas character who's fate is to be the apparent demise of "Christ" after which he hangs himself. This lead me to realise, that the ending is actually a variation of the resurrection:

Clouds depart and the troupe gets practically raptured from the hands of their tormentors!