"The Magician" {1926} is directed by Rex Ingram and stars Alice Terry as Margaret, Ivan Pétrovich as Dr Arthur Burdon and Paul Wegener as Oliver Haddo, the villainous practitioner of Black Magic.
If one is willing to make the necessary suspension of disbelief there isn't the slightest doubt but that the film provides loads of entertainment as a horror/thriller combination.
The two leads don't have very much to do in terms of acting. Burdon is the usual faithful hero and Alice Terry's character spends most of her time staring helplessly about in a trance and looking full of Angst. Paul Wegner (who directed "The Golum" (1920)} steals every scene he's in with a wonderfully spectacular over-the-top melodramatic portrayal of the Magician who needs the heart blood of a maiden to create life {hmm . . . I wonder who's supposed to provide that ingredient}.
Another star in the film is the great cliff-top, tower-castle of Hadoo himself, surrounded with bolts of lightning and filled with such items as strange potions which bubble and foam with a satisfactorily smoking violence, strange manuscripts and sinister props. When Hadoo picks up his box of sharp knives, one can't help noticing the nearby cupboard topped with a skull nicely festooned with cobwebs. There's the expected winding staircase to impede the heroic rescue and an open fully fired-up incinerator helps us along to the climax which ends with a suitable cataclysm.
There are a very few points where the film is slightly disjointed--obviously owing to the fact that a few frames have been lost, but one soon forgets them. Generally the print used by TCM is very sharp and beautifully tinted. It's a pleasure to watch it. Robert Israel's score is well chosen, skillfully applied and very atmospheric. Note, for example, the reunion of hero and heroine is underlined by the love theme from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.
The story of the film is based on a novel of the same name by Somerset Maugham and it is available for free download on Project Gutenberg. I've not read it yet but I might do so if only to compare the two approaches.
This is a film I would recommend for the entertaining use it makes of the typical stereotypes of the horror genre but above all for Wegener's fabulous performance.
If one is willing to make the necessary suspension of disbelief there isn't the slightest doubt but that the film provides loads of entertainment as a horror/thriller combination.
The two leads don't have very much to do in terms of acting. Burdon is the usual faithful hero and Alice Terry's character spends most of her time staring helplessly about in a trance and looking full of Angst. Paul Wegner (who directed "The Golum" (1920)} steals every scene he's in with a wonderfully spectacular over-the-top melodramatic portrayal of the Magician who needs the heart blood of a maiden to create life {hmm . . . I wonder who's supposed to provide that ingredient}.
Another star in the film is the great cliff-top, tower-castle of Hadoo himself, surrounded with bolts of lightning and filled with such items as strange potions which bubble and foam with a satisfactorily smoking violence, strange manuscripts and sinister props. When Hadoo picks up his box of sharp knives, one can't help noticing the nearby cupboard topped with a skull nicely festooned with cobwebs. There's the expected winding staircase to impede the heroic rescue and an open fully fired-up incinerator helps us along to the climax which ends with a suitable cataclysm.
There are a very few points where the film is slightly disjointed--obviously owing to the fact that a few frames have been lost, but one soon forgets them. Generally the print used by TCM is very sharp and beautifully tinted. It's a pleasure to watch it. Robert Israel's score is well chosen, skillfully applied and very atmospheric. Note, for example, the reunion of hero and heroine is underlined by the love theme from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.
The story of the film is based on a novel of the same name by Somerset Maugham and it is available for free download on Project Gutenberg. I've not read it yet but I might do so if only to compare the two approaches.
This is a film I would recommend for the entertaining use it makes of the typical stereotypes of the horror genre but above all for Wegener's fabulous performance.