Burl reviews The Magician! (1958)

Hä hä, it is Bürl, here to review a movie made by the grand Ingmar Bergman, which I vaguely recall seeing thirty-plus years ago at an art gallery screening! Ha ha, old Ingmar always had a taste for the macabre, as demonstrated not just in outright horror pictures like Hour of the Wolf and The Serpent’s Egg, but in uncanny tales like The Virgin Spring (the inspiration for Last House on the Left, don’t forget!) and psychodramas like Persona and Cries and Whispers! And didn’t Wild Strawberries have a pretty creepy dream in it? Ha ha, it sure did!

Well, today I’m reviewing The Magician, and this picture has no shortage of horror tropes and atmospheres swirling through it! The whole opening, set in a carriage traveling through a spooky, supposedly ghost-infested forest, feels like something out of Bava’s Black Sunday! The carriage is that of Vogler, a mesmerist and magician played mutely by Max Von Sydow, and his crew of confederates! These include his young assistant, who is a lady pretending to be a man in the least convincing drag performance since Dragonslayer; the vulgar tout Tubal; the nervous young coachman Simson; a drunken, dying actor they find in the forest; and an old witch!

The gang is on the run from the law, we soon learn! Hunted as charlatans, mostly, we assume, because of the old lady’s potions which are worthless or even actively harmful, they’re moving on with all possible speed to a town in which they and their chicanery are yet unknown! But when they get to the town the authorities seem to be waiting for them, and a trio of local so-called worthies, including the magistrate, the head doctor and the police chief, proceed to humiliate Vogler and his troupe, demanding proof of their magical abilities and threatening them with consequences should they in fact prove able!

The picture then moves into a series of talk-heavy vignettes between the various characters as the troupe is ordered to stay the night at the magistrate’s large house, and the various servants, guests and inhabitants interact in variously spooky, romantic, dramatic and comic ways! And it’s no surprise when the supposed young man, Vogler’s companion, turns out to be a lady, and Vogler’s wife! Ha ha, no foolin’, it’s Thulin! Nor is it a shocker when we discover that Vogler’s beard is a fake! Comes the dawn and Vogler and his friends must figure out a way to take revenge for their mistreatment without being thrown in the pokey; and we, the viewers, find we have been treated to a discourse on degrees of truth and the values associated with them; on the contract between spectator and artist; on the value of art in the midst of existential crisis; and on moral culpability and the relativity of same!

Von Sydow, whom we know well not just from Bergman pictures, but from Bergmanesque pictures like Dune, Dreamscape, and Never Say Never Again, plays Vogler as though constantly in the grip of anguished rage! Every actor is solid in fact, especially those members of Bergman’s own regular troupe, like Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson, and Ingrid Thulin! The photography by Bergman compatriot Gunnar Fischer, is velvet black and lustrous silver, and the low-key score is effective! Sure, the middle part of the picture is a little episodic, but it’s never dull, and the picture weaves its artificial sorcery as surely as Vogler does in performance with his magic lantern! The Magician is a terrific picture and I give it three unexpectedly happy endings!

Burl reviews Hour of the Wolf! (1968)

It’s good to see you! Yes, it’s Burl here to review another picture, this one from the beret-clad Swedish master himself, Ingmar Bergman! Ha ha, I love a good Bergman picture, and while Hour of the Wolf is not one of his more generally beloved works, it’s a favorite of mine! Reason? It’s like Hammer Studios called up the old boy and asked for his take on one of their old spooky castle pictures! Anyway, if that had happened, this is probably what you’d get – a Bergmanesque study in human isolation and self-obsession that evolves into a full-throated horror movie complete with creatures and gushing blood!

The movie takes place on some lonely Frisian island with a good view of the sea! We meet Alma Borg, the pregnant young wife of a missing painter named Johann Borg, who of course are played by Liv Ulmann and Max Von Sydow respectively! We get the whole story on what happened from Alma and from Johann’s crazy diaries! It seems that early in the summer Johann’s muse deserted him; but for an artist as driven as him something has to take its place! He's open to whatever might come along, no matter how unpleasant, no matter how personal and self-manufactured and guilt-fueled! He begins to be tormented by demons who come in the disguise of annoying petit bourgeoisie and who might as well have been parachuted in whole from a Bunuel movie!

The demons, it seems, occupy a castle on the other side of the island! One of them is a spooky old woman who, we’re told, must never take off her hat because her face will come along with it! (We later see this hideous image in action!) Another looks like Bela Lugosi, complete with widow’s peak! Still another is something of a fish-man! There’s a little kid demon who wears a Speedo and attacks the painter while he’s sitting by the sea! And then there’s a rather sexy demoness from his past! Ha ha, ring-a-ding-ding!

Well, the demons invite the Borgs over to their castle for a terrifying rumbustification! By this time Alma can see them, even though they’re a construction of, or at least specially sent for the tormenting of, Johann’s fractured psyche! It all winds up with some pretty freaky imagery, of the sort you might find on a videotape in The Ring or something like that, and of course culminates with Johann’s mysterious disappearance!

Of course, canny moviegoers know that Johann has not disappeared at all! He simply moved to New York, changed his name to Frederick and became a character in Hannah and Her Sisters! Ha ha! But that knowledge doesn’t mitigate the dread Bergman manages to cook up in this beautifully-shot production! Of course the great Sven Nykvist was behind the camera, and the high-contrast black and white photography is a wonder to behold!

This movie came along just after Bergman reinvented the artsy psychodrama with Persona, and I think it was pretty perplexing to audiences of the day, who considered it a step back or at the very least a lateral move! But I think (with the benefit of the larger view) that taking on the grammar of horror itself constitutes a worthwhile experiment! I wish ol’ Ingmar had made more of them, actually, The Serpent’s Egg notwithstanding! I give Hour of the Wolf three and a half lascivious grannies!