Bergman on the set with Max von Sydow (left)
THE MAGICIAN
(Ansiktet) B+
aka: The Face
Sweden (101 mi)
1958 d: Ingmar Bergman
After exploring
themes of death and redemption in The
Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) (1957) and Wild
Strawberries (Smultronstället) (1957), the director decides to go creepy,
with Bergman exploring the horrors of the spirit world in a film he describes
as a comedy, yet also one of his more macabre efforts, especially the dark
Gothic look, where more than any of his other films this resembles the graphic
design of black and white German Expressionist films of the 20’s, including a
mute character and long wordless sequences that allow shadows and mirrors to convey
hidden expressions from the subconscious.
A brooding and darkly unsettling film set in the middle of the 19th
century, when people were still coming to grips with metaphysics and the power
of illusion, with the supernatural playing a prominent role, where this film
pits an irrational faith in the unknown against the powers of reason,
personified by two stubbornly headstrong men, Max von Sydow as a magician and
master illusionist Dr. Vogler, who is challenged at every turn by the rational
skepticism of Gunnar Björnstrand as Dr. Vergérus, the Minister of Health (two
names that will recur in Bergman’s later works). With an atmospheric opening drenched in the
foggy mysticism of Kurasawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD (1957), made a year earlier,
where a rag-tag group of performing artists from Vogler’s Magnetic Health
Theater ride a rickety stagecoach through a haunted forest filled with evil
spirits and demons (and a near-dead body), which includes Vogler as a wandering
magician with his faithful wife and assistant, Ingrid Thulin as Manda, who
plays both male and female roles, a clownish Åke Fridell as Tubal, who serves
as manager and spokesman for the group, providing a highly decorative running
dialogue that hypes each anticipated event with a stream of flowery superlatives,
attempting to create a sense of awe and wonder, and Granny Vogler (Naima
Wifstrand), an alleged 200-year old witch providing comic relief as one of the
passengers who devises potions, can foretell the future, and literally cackles
through most of her performance, muttering under her breath, “I see what I see,
I know what I know.” En route to
Stockholm they are stopped in a smaller provincial village, immediately subject
to suspicion and potential arrest by a group of prominent city leaders
(considered an affront to staid bourgeois morality), including Starbeck, the
overly pompous police commissioner (Toivo Powlo), Egerman, a timid loyal civil
servant (Erland Josephson), yet led by an overly demonstrative scientific
rationalist Dr. Vergérus, whose secret desire is to dissect Vogler after death
proving he’s a mere mortal, but who decides to investigate the rumors that mere
hucksterism could potentially be actual magic, ordering a private performance
in town. While Vogler is dressed with a
wig, a beard, and false eyebrows, pretending to be mute, claiming to have
supernatural powers, the struggle between the mockingly sarcastic doctor and
the reticently mute magician results in the demystification of the magician’s
act, suggesting he is a charlatan, with an arrogant Dr. Vergérus exposing and
thoroughly humiliating them at every turn, which seems more about class
difference than magic, as Vergérus belongs to the wealthy aristocratic elite
who find this sort of lowlife riff-raff utterly contemptible, bordering on a
circus act. Ordered to the servant’s
quarters in the kitchen, this less snobbish audience holds magic acts in high
esteem, with Bibi Andersson playing a wonderfully flirtatious maiden in town,
prodded by Tubal’s eloquent power of suggestion after introducing Granny’s
“love potions,” she instantly takes up with the handsome young coach driver,
Lars Ekborg from Summer
with Monika (Sommaren med Monika) (1953), while Tubal consorts with a
lonely widow in town who’s not going to allow this opportunity to pass her
by.
Withdrawing to their
private quarters afterwards, Egerman’s wife Ottilia (Gertrud Fridh) is
mesmerized by the magician’s spells, seeking “spiritual” comfort, inviting him
to her room later that night, as is Tubal to his lonely widow, where Vogler’s
appearance and the mere suggestion of his spells seems to have provided an
allure of intoxication to the entrenched lives of the lonely aristocrats, where
the visitors offer the hope for something new.
Vogler, of course, has no interest whatsoever in the invitation, as he
has an affectionate and understanding wife who reveals a feminine side once the
doors are closed, though Vergérus intrudes into their bedroom, obviously
enchanted by Manda’s hidden sensuality, taking more than a casual interest,
which only draws the ire of Vogler, finding that man’s cynical behavior to be a
pathetic overreach of his authority, as coveting another man’s wife is frowned
upon on all levels of society, though making a spectacle of it is uncustomarily
insulting and rude. This sets the stage
for the next day’s performance, which offers a surprise, as after initially
hypnotizing the police chief’s wife, ridiculing both herself and her husband,
Vogler is summarily attacked by a coachman he hypnotized, ashamed of how easily
he was manipulated in front of others, physically assaulting Vogler afterwards,
who is left on the floor and pronounced dead by none other than Dr. Vergérus
himself, who finally gets his wish to examine the remains, but in performing an
autopsy he discovers instead his own house of horrors, which could easily be
interpreted as an intellectual horror film and a symbolic self-portrait, a
journey from magician to savior, then to con man, and finally back to an
extraordinary artist again. The master
of illusion seemingly rises from the dead, yet remains unseen, where only his
presence is felt, like a haunting, where Vergérus is staggered by what he perceives,
with Vogler’s face reappearing without his mask, giving rise to apparitions, as
suddenly supernatural elements mysteriously occur with no explanation, causing
the doctor to grow hysterical, questioning his own ethical core beliefs while
at his wit’s end whimpering on the floor in fear, only to be interrupted by
Manda, breaking the spell, so to speak, preventing even worse psychological
damage. The doctor, of course, pretends
it was nothing afterwards, still insisting the man is a fraud, yet there he was
cowering on the floor overcome by dread, horrified by the ghoulish tricks that
left him utterly petrified. Very
compelling stuff, particularly the magician’s payback, a brilliant hall of
mirror’s sequence happening in the clutter of an attic, a back room of the
doctor’s private quarters, which is an interesting contrast of austerity of
emotion, as the magician does not speak, using stark, original scenes of the
inexplicable juxtaposed against the gluttonous affair in town filled with
exaggerated excesses of food, sex, and drink.
The final performance, which comes after the regularly scheduled
performance when no one suspects anything, is truly supernatural.
While Vogler
pretends to be something he is not, concocting mysteries that are all easily
explainable, covering himself in a disguise, where it is suggested he’s on the
run from facing criminal charges, yet he’s still a compelling and sympathetic
figure, where there’s something about him that is altogether recognizable and
appealing, becoming a fallen and despised Christ figure suffering the sins of
humiliation, an artist, an illusionist, all various aspects of Bergman’s own
creative approach, with the artist viewed as a huckster, a criminal, a con
artist, perhaps even a clown, yet they conjure up emotions that are inherently
human, which is the beauty of the magical connection between the illusory world
and the real. By being aware of his own
limitations, tormented by his own self-doubt, Vogler delights in the fact there
are moments when he truly does hold a special power, connecting to the unknown,
perhaps even haunted by it himself, yet there is an unmistakable gift or spell
that he holds over audiences, as he has the power to touch their souls,
anticipating a spirit of a more modern era when performers are revered for
their particularly unique talents.
Revisiting themes from Sawdust
and Tinsel (Gycklarnas afton) (1953) and a stepping stone to Hour
of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) (1967),
Bergman creates a high-wire act that flirts with disaster, overcoming all odds
of cynical speculation and doom, relegated to the gutter at one point, exposed
as near worthless, presented with unspairing realism, probing the depths of the
characters, with each nakedly exposed at some point, yet somehow triumphing in
the end, where they move on to yet another show, summoned to perform before the
King of Sweden for his own personal audience with the magician. Holding a lifelong interest in the magical
world of make-believe, Bergman reaches into his own bag of tricks with this
one, perfecting the art of misdirection, as the surface is never what it
appears, but who in the audience is able to see behind the curtain, under the
mask, and into the hearts of the performers?
If performance is an illusion, a sleight of hands, a trick, then what is
the truth? And if a performer resorts to
magic or trickery in order to convey a larger truth, shouldn’t they be lauded
with praise, and not sneered at as a charlatan or huckster. Sometimes it’s hard not to confuse one’s
perception of the messenger with the message.
If cinema, like the circus, is viewed as secondhand entertainment,
unable to reach the magisterial heights of the noble and illustrious theater,
then how does one explain how it makes us feel?
Is it not just as true? Often
overlooked due to the power of the films that came both before and after, with
some believing this was a response to his dismissive theater critics, where he
doubled as the artistic director of the Malmö City Theater (which may account
for the spillover of anger), Bergman examines his own existential issues
through a kind of ghost story that deliciously celebrates the theater, filled with
shadows and mirrors and forests with demonic spirits, including a macabre yet
all-too recognizable Macbethian witch
casting spells, conjuring up magic potions, which is all part of delivering a
performance, making an audience believe in
the illusions and trickery, becoming fascinated by the allure and the beguiling
art of seduction (which are always more fun when they’re not fully understood),
hoping to gain some special insight into the mystery of the human condition and
the ephemeral nature of truth.
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