Word: magicianly
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...Between (London Films; United Artists) features a famous cine-magician, British Director Carol Reed, using the same old saw that worked so well in Odd Man Out, The Third Man and The Fallen Idol. Again, Reed's biting suspense all but slices the moviegoer in half. But this time Director Reed does not quite manage to put him together again...
...Magician (Columbia, 3-D), is a follow-up to the money-making House of Wax (TIME, April 20), again starring Vincent Price. Explains a Columbia official: "Everything pops out of the screen in this one. Price is shown cutting off a girl's head with a buzz saw. He is burned to death in a big steel box with a glass window...
...autumn colors as peasants, in regal purples and crimsons as court maidens, in severe white as swans, made a gorgeous frame for the principal action. Among the brightest spots: Fonteyn's touching pantomime as the bewitched swan-princess and her vicious precision in her alternate role as the magician's wicked daughter; Dancer Somes's hurtling leaps in the court scene; a new "Neapolitan" duet (danced by Julia Farron and Alexander Grant) that nearly stopped the show...
...rich Technicolor, the Houdini career is followed from struggling carnival magician to the world's best known illusionist. The movie ends with his death in 1926 at the age of 52 while he was suspended upside down in a strait jacket in a huge tank of water (actually, Houdini died in a hospital of peritonitis). Other highlights: his arrest in Germany on the charge that his act was a fraud and his acquittal after demonstrating his abilities in a courtroom; his escapes from a strait jacket while dangling from a Times Square building, from a packing case lowered into...
...picture makes no attempt to give away any of the secrets of Houdini's feats. In the title role, Tony Curtis is as unrevealing about Houdini the man as about Houdini the magician, hardly hinting at his dynamic personality, strength, ingenuity and resourcefulness. As Houdini's wife and assistant, Janet Leigh (Mrs. Tony Curtis in real life) is another cute trick. Together, they achieve an illusion that outdoes Houdini himself: in the good old Hollywood tradition, they grow old in the film's final sequences without perceptibly growing one bit less young and handsome...