Word: bergman
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...Magician (Svensk Filmindustri; Janus) is the latest public fantasy of Sweden's famed Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman, whose last two exports to the U.S.. Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, won hosannas in the art houses. Like them, The Magician pleases the eye and agitates the mind. But drifting with its phantasms is no easy matter, and many a moviegoer is likely, instead, to drift right out of the theater...
...Bergman's magician (Max von Sydow) is a mid-19th century Mesmer whose touring Magnetic Health Theater is entirely composed of psychological castaways: the magician's wife (Ingrid Thulin), masquerading as a male helper; his witch-grandmother; an ailing, tosspot actor; and a silly, sex-ridden coachman. Headed for Stockholm by coach, the troupe is stopped by police at a tollgate, taken into the custody of three local notables and challenged to prove its supernatural powers. As the magician prepares for the performance, his associates get seduced by the kitchen help, the hostess has hysterics, and grandma hands...
Just what this Gothic hoedown signifies is anybody's guess. Best bet is that Bergman intends it as a kind of spiritual autobiography, identifies himself both with the masked magician and the drunken actor, who dies with his battered top hat on, raving: "I always longed for a knife to free me ... Then what we call the spirit would rise up from the meaningless carcass." Cinemagician Bergman seems to see both men as despairing artists whose creative imaginations doom them to social obloquy and the distrust and disdain of hardheaded authority. What scant optimism there is in this fatalistic...
...illustrating this text, Bergman wobbles between drama and melodrama, alternates genuine horrors with sham tricks, comic sex with serious sex, and poetry with lampoon. Result is that The Magician is perhaps his least successful film so far. But for every murky symbol, there is a sharp physical image: footsteps become important, a thunderclap almost too real, and shafts of light through the mist startlingly beautiful. With the help of this brilliant graphic technique, a haunting guitar score, and the talented stock company of players who have turned up in all recent Bergman films. The Magician manages to fascinate...
Wild Strawberries (Swedish). In his 18th film, Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman examines one day in the life of a very old and eminent doctor, employing the language of dream and symbol to achieve a moving...