User Reviews

Edwin S. Porter was definitely one of the most important men in the history of American film-making, as one of the very first directors to experiment with the cinema as a new language to tell stories. Director of two of the most important films in history ("Life of an American Fireman" and "The Great Train Robbery", both in 1903), Porter began experimenting with film since the late 1890s, when he began to work for Thomas Edison as projectionist and mechanic, eventually impressing Edison with his knowledge and becoming one of his first directors. Influenced by another pioneer, the legendary Georges Méliès, Porter began to experiment with the many tricks the new medium allowed him, often copying Méliès' works in order to eventually improve them. In "The Mystic Swing", his fourth film, he experiments in the same way that Méliès did: with a story about magic.

"The Mystic Swing" is a short story about a magical duel between two strange men during a magician's show. The Professor and Mephisto meet when the Professor is giving a magic show, Mephisto challenges him to a duel and so the fight begins. The Professor starts by magically appearing a young lady in a swing. To his surprise, Mephisto makes her disappear, so then both engage in a fight for the disappeared lady, the Professor making her appear and Mephisto disappearing her. The magicians continue their fight until one final trick proves who is the most powerful of them.

Written by Porter, the plot is very simple, and it's obviously devised to make the "disappearing" trick the main attraction of the movie. It's truly amazing the improvement Porter was doing in this early years, as the cuts that make the trick look a lot better and subtler than what those he pulled off in the inferior "Faust and Marguerite", where the cuts were done in a less artistic way. The whole staging of the film is also superior, and while there is basically no dialog between the characters, the whole movie feels really vivid and very alive. This is another difference with "Faust and Marguerite", as while obviously the movie is driven by the "trick", he builds up a certain storyline that makes the movie interesting.

At this point Méliès was still having the upper hand in terms of film-making, with his grandiose pieces about fantasy and magic being the most popular films of his time; however, "The Mystic Swing" is an early prove that Porter was really a talent worthy of consideration, and it shows the skills that would take him to make his highly influential movies. One can't help but wonder the kind of reactions this movie made when first released, when this kind of tricks were still a novelty or something unheard of. "The Mystic Swing", the magical duel between a magician and Mephisto certainly could only be classified as the closest thing to magic. 5/10

This is a very nice film, which uses trick photography. The premise is simple. Mephisto makes a woman appear on a swing he proves is not rigged somehow. The woman appears, and the other man makes her disapear, sthe process follows, until Mephisto makes a skeleton appear... You can view this and a lot of other classic short films from the Edison Kinectoscope company.

The Mystic Swing (1900)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Edison feature is yet another attempt at them to rip-off the great Georges Melies. This one here isn't nearly as entertaining as some that they produced but we see a couple magicians going back and forth as they make a variety of women appear in a swing. That's pretty much all there is to this thing and since it runs just 57-seconds there's really not too much going on. I think the tricks performed are all rather simple but I'm going to guess that if you had never seen a trick film in 1900 then you probably would have been impressed. If you are familiar with other, better trick films then this one here just doesn't offer enough to make it very entertaining. There's one quick gag dealing with a skeleton but this here isn't enough to put it in the higher tier of trick films.

Not the most accomplished trick film of the period, but I found it amusing in a macabre way. It's not the trick itself that makes the movie fun-- it's the lowkey competition between the two magicians and that odd moment with the skeleton that refuses to vanish.