The Magician

Its all here in embryo: the paradigm for Frankenstein. The mad scientist, trying to create life in his laboratory located in a forbidden tower on the top of a rocky mountain, while thunder and lightning terrify the superstitious villagers. Supposedly adapted from a W. Somerset Maugham novel, the possibility exists that it was Maugham (a qualified physician) who, still very much on the make for an overwhelming success in his third book, might have cribbed more than a little bit from Mary Shelly. However, instead of the Romantic Prometheus, driven mad by hubris and symbolic of mankind's desire to harness newfangled science to dominate and conquer nature, despite the warnings of terrible consequences, all taking place on the edge of the Industrial revolution, we have the elements shaped into a Victorian melodrama of the villain-continued-to-pursue-her variety complete with virgin's blood and a heroine tied in artful knots, and a villain motivated by nothing more than criminal insanity.

On the other hand the artful visual qualities of the storytelling is something that has been lost in today's film vocabulary. A zippy 80 minutes or so, today the coarse need for thrills from this type of film would have necessitated a number anatomically gruesome murders before the final heroine jeopardy and heroic rescue. Here a little horror goes a very long way (all the way to the French Riviera, in fact). THE MAGICIAN is everything that made the silent film, at the same time, so great and so very silly. By the way, shots of Paris, virtually traffic free are a revelation, as are shots of a cobblestone village high up in the mountains (the Alps Maritimes) behind the Riviera. And yes, that's the same Paul Wegener who directed and starred in two versions of The Golom as well as playing Svengali in a 1927 version of the Du Maurier story.

Practically every element of this film holds up very well here in the twenty-first century, eighty-four years after the movie was made - the writing, the casting, the directing (and art direction), the photography (both indoor and outdoor), the "costumes" and "sets" (really, the fashions and architecture of the era were a captivating delight), and most of the acting. I say "most" because the only thing that seemed dated in this post-feminist era was the woe-is-me attitude of the hapless heroine.

Particularly well-cast in terms of "looking the part" were the two male leads, both protagonist and antagonist. (After all, these were not speaking parts, so look was of high importance.)

Surprisingly enjoyable were some quite subtle, non-intrusive comedic tension-breakers by peripheral characters, including some clever silent movie sight gags.

The main recommendation I can make for seeing this film, however, is the clarity of the photography, both for the close-ups, and for some wonderful outdoor set pieces.

Rex Ingram is probably best remembered for directing Rudolph Valentino's breakthrough film THE FOUIR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921) but he ventured into the fledgling terror genre with this thriller starring Paul (The Golem) Wegener.

Wegener's character, Dr. Oliver Haddo, is allegedly based on the real life character Alastair Crowley. When we first meet him he is in attendance as the famous Dr. Burdon (Ivan Petrovich) saves the life of lovely Margaret Dauncey (Alice Terry, the real life Mrs. Ingram) with an operation on her spine. While recovering, Margaret falls in love with Dr. Burdon and he returns her affections. Dr. Haddo is interested in her too but for far less healthy reasons. Dr. H you see, has been searching for the way to create artificial life in the laboratory (sound familiar?) and a old book on alchemy has informed him that he needs "the heart blood of a maiden" added to certain other chemicals to make this happen.

So determined is Haddo to make this happen that he hypnotises Margaret and marries her while she is under his spell. At his mountain top lab he plans to complete his diabolical experiment. Will Margaret lose her own life so Haddo can create life? Will Dr. Burdon find her in time? Ah . . . that would be telling!

What many of us wonder is, is Haddo a real magician or just a very good hypnotist? In one scene he allows a poisonous snake to bite him but makes the lethal wound vanish with just a wave of his hand. Just a moment later the same snake bites a young woman and she must be rushed to hospital. Now most of us know that a venomous snake expels all its venom at the first bite so the fact that it was the second bite that felled the woman should have been a tipoff that Haddo was not bitten at all. Yes, but remember this is a movie and we have to build up suspense. An amusing scene has Dr. Burdon and Dr. Haddo meeting for the first time in a park. As Haddo walks away Burdon remarks to Margaret "He looks like he stepped out of a melodrama!". As if on cue Haddo glares back, throws his cape over his shoulder and makes a perfect stage exit! It is an innocuous but effective moment and briefly clouds the menace that will soon be facing the lovers.

The sequence most people remember is where Haddo gives Margaret a look at Hell. It is a rugged looking place but rather removed from the horrors of the Italian film L'INFERNO (1909) or even DANTE'S INFERNO (1926). The place is loaded with damned souls but they all dance around carefree while Pan (at least I think it's Pan) plays a tune on his pipes. Another faun (dancer Hubert Stowitts) takes Margaret in his arms and passionately kisses her as the dream ends. So did they really go to Hell or was it all a hypnotic dream? In a key scene soon after this Haddo visits Margaret at her home and we clearly see his lips say the words "your rape" which sends her into the deepest despair. Whether the rape was actual or just implied quickly becomes a moot point because she goes away with him, convinced she can never marry Dr. Burdon now.

Elements of the final reels of THE MAGICIAN figure prominently in the Universal film FRANKENSTEIN (1931). Haddo has a monolithic castle at the top of a mountain, a dwarf assistant do you think his name is Fritz?) and a well equipped lab. I think that not only director James Whale but also the set designer for FRANKENSTEIN had to have sat through this film more than once.

Talkies came along about a year after this film was completed and Wegener, who was uncertain of his ability to speak English, returned to Germany. He was not alone, he was soon joined by Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt and several other actors who had their doubts about being able to effectively perform in a foreign (to them)language.

So is THE MAGICIAN worth seeing? Yes it is, despite its shortcomings it is a well paced and convincingly performed thriller. Give it a try.

Until a few months ago, when Michael Elliott added it to his list of films watched to be exact, I was under the impression that this was a lost title – a view which was certainly true till the late 70s since Carlos Clarens, in his wonderful 1967 "Horror Movies" book, called it "probably the most elusive of lost movies" and even Leslie Halliwell, in the 1977 edition of his famous "Film Guide", gives it as unavailable for reappraisal! Indeed, virtually the only way I had previously known this film was via one intriguing still of the Hades sequence found in the section devoted to director Rex Ingram in the periodical "The Movies" (published in the early 80s)…so, it's great that THE MAGICIAN has eventually seen the light of day (albeit unofficially) and, thankfully, it lives up to its considerable reputation – to my eyes, at least.

Ingram was one of Silent cinema's master visual stylists but is now a forgotten figure best-known for the Rudolph Valentino version of THE FOUR HORSEMAN OF THE APOCALYSE (1921); his retirement from films once Talkies came in suggests that, like D.W. Griffith, he was unable to adapt to the ongoing progress in cinematic technique and, indeed, his films – like Griffith's – have an inherently stilted quality to them which dates his output more than those of contemporary auteurs! Anyway, this was my fourth Ingram movie after the interesting THE CONQUERING POWER (1921), the fine if somewhat underwhelming THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1922) and the rousing SCARAMOUCHE (1923); unfortunately, my copy of MARE NOSTRUM (1926) – recorded off TCM UK – got erased by accident before I had the opportunity to watch it. Alice Terry, Ingram's wife, appeared in 15 of his films and here plays the distressed virginal heroine – who's the prime ingredient for the experiment concocted by the magician of the title (Paul Wegener). The latter, best-known for his three "Golem" pictures made at the height of the "German Expressionist" movement, makes for an overwhelmingly menacing villain – although I found his being a medical student quite amusing (Wegener was 52 at the time of filming!). By the way, the character of Oliver Haddo was based by novelist W. Somerset Maugham on notorious English Occultist and writer Aleister Crowley! The film, an MGM production but shot in France (where Ingram lived), is ostensibly a variation on the Frankenstein myth with a few Svengali overtones thrown in for good measure; interestingly, Paul Wegener would star in an official version of that one in Germany the following year. Ingram's assistant director was the future iconoclastic English film-maker, Michael Powell, who also appears unbilled in a snake-charming sequence around the middle of the film! As expected, the film is pictorially quite stylish (shot by frequent Rex Ingram, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder lenser, John F. Seitz), especially in the fantasy sequence set in Hades – which must surely have left an indelible impression on Ingram's production manager here, Harry Lachman, to refer back to it when he came to direct the Spencer Tracy version of DANTE'S INFERNO (1935) – and the finale set in a laboratory on a remote mountaintop, which uncannily prefigures (literally step by step) the similar climax at the end of James Whale's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)!; as a matter of fact, Wegener even has a dwarfish assistant a' la Dwight Frye in Whale's FRANKENSTEIN (1931) – so, it's very possible that Whale had seen Ingram's film.

One is all the more grateful, then, that a print of THE MAGICIAN has survived since it helps throw more light on the influences behind the greatest horror film ever made (which also happens to be my all-time favorite film)

In the 1920s films dealing with supernatural evil were extremely rare. However, director Rex Ingram, obviously influenced by earlier German forays into the supernatural, cast German actor Paul Wegener of DER GOLEM in this adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel THE MAGICIAN. Wegener's menacing performance as an evil Yogi in LEBENDE BUDDHAS (1925) made him a good choice to play Oliver Haddo, obsessed with creating life from an ancient formula requiring the heart's blood of a maiden, played by Ingram's wife Alice Terry.

John F. Seitz' cinematography is superb, especially in the depiction of the heroine's hallucinatory descent into Hell where she is figuratively ravished by a lustful and athletic satyr. And although Haddo doesn't succeed in creating the grisly, half-complete humans as in the novel, the controversial subject matter was nevertheless strong enough to insure the film's failure at the box-office in 1926.

Interesting comparisons have been made between this film and James Wale's FRANKENSTEIN, but the subject of black magic also invites comparison with later films - THE BLACK CAT (1934), THE NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), and THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968) - featuring characters who like Oliver Haddo were modeled on real-life occultist Aleister Crowley.