Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

braddugg Its a film I was disappointed with. The acting was overboard by and the direction was wayward. I thought that the director Ingmar Bergman sought to offer us a mystique spell and took the help of Magic and illusions in this. The visuals are nice but there is haphazardness in the placing of scenes. The characters seem to have been half baked and not fully evolve. There are not enough reasons presented as to why anything happens. The climax makes the whole film comical, gesturing that we can get away with whatever crime we did, if the intentions are for good.It's not about the realities we live with but more-so about the imagination of director. I really if the story was about the magician or is it it about something else called the imagination of the magician. Why he goes after people who are not for him, how he gets selected suddenly by the king at the end? Questions left unanswered do not satisfy the hunger of watching this, and rather left me in lurch and disappointment. The acting was mediocre considering that it was Max Von Sydow, arguably a great Swedish actor who played the protagonist. I did not understand his angst nor did I get to know what the silences meant. The others (I do not remember their names) are just OK. The sound track is great, the guitar was used generously and creates the mood nicely. The cinematography was just right. The art direction is extravagant perhaps adhering to the need of the period in which the film was set. The editing could have been way better. The moments where Grandma speaks some lines could have done in a better way or better chopped off. It's an average watch and not a fully satisfying one for me. A 2/5 for this.

dlee2012 This 1958 Bergman film is often overlooked, sandwiched as it is between Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries on one side and the Faith Trilogy on the other. Nevertheless, it still offers many profound moments and remains a complex tale about masks and illusions.The film can be read as Bergman, the master illusionist, destroying the critics who set out to humiliate him. The fact that the magician has no apparent voice of his own but lets his act speak for him is a reflection of the director's role, quietly manipulating the audience from behind the scenes through his art.The traveling group of entertainers representing the restless, roaming life of the artist is a common motif through much of Bergman's middle-period work including Sawdust and Tinsel and the Seventh Seal. These characters are depicted as never at home in society, nor appreciated by it. Invariably they represent low-culture forms of entertainment from circuses and medieval troupes to, in this case, a magic and animal magnetism/hypnotism show. Perhaps there was still a feeling at this time that cinema could not be one of the high arts? This is ironic as Bergman was, of course, doing so much to legitimise cinema as a serious art form with each film he produced at this time.Masks and layers of truth are symbolic throughout the film. The magician lives his role and is only exposed at the end, after he has broken through his critics' own masks and truly scared them for one fleeting moment.Likewise, hands are symbolic throughout this piece. As an apparent mute, the magician expresses his thoughts through his hand gestures and it is a disembodied hand at the end that he uses as part of his tricks.The ending, however is truly subversive. Whilst the audience are encouraged to identify with the magician has he outwits the cynical and mocking critics, once his masks are stripped away, he is shown to be, indeed, just another vagabond entertainer who grovels for some money, whilst the critic, humiliated moments before, re-assumes his own mask. Rejected by the woman who loved the illusion and not the man behind it he seems on the verge of another defeat. Once the audience is tempted to conclude that perhaps the critics were right after all, Bergman follows with a feint of his own: the magician has found royal favour and is off to perform at court. Whilst the petty officials have rejected him, he is about to be received by the highest office in the land.In terms of social strata, he has moved from a station well-below the officials to a privileged audience with the king that they themselves have probably never had. The artist has triumphed over his critics.

Django6924 It's not Bergman as his most tormented or saturnine, but it's thoroughly entertaining, more theatrical (in a good sense) than say Persona or In a Glass, Darkly, and still an unqualified masterpiece on a level of artistry that no one making films today seems to be able to achieve. It makes me think in some ways of Shakespeare's plays like the Henry IV with their mix of tragedy and comedy--all done with tremendous showmanship. I'll bet Orson Welles admired this film-- if he ever saw it.Bergman seems almost forgotten today. Films like this one, Naked Night, Hour of the Wolf, Persona, etc., hardly ever crop up on TV or film festivals. When Bergman is represented, it's usually by The Seventh Seal (not my favorite, and a film that begs for a parody), Wild Strawberries, Smiles of a Summer Night (because of the musical version, no doubt), or Fanny and Alexander, which is more recent, and most important, in color. What a pity. The man created a body of work virtually unsurpassed in the second half of the 20th century.

MartinHafer I've seen a lot of Ingmar Bergman films and sometimes I don't want to see one of his films about death or mental illness. Well, starting in the 1960s to the 1980s, these were the main themes of his movies, but in some of his earlier films, these are not so pervasive--such as the movies The Devil's Eye (a comedy) and The Magician ("Ansiktet"). Because of this, they may be more approachable to the average viewer who would balk at the much more serious tone of such classics as Through a Glass Darkly (deep depression), Persona (mental illness), Autumn Sonata (repressed anger and abandonment), The Seventh Seal (death and the plague) or Fanny and Alexander (child abuse and emotional neglect).The story is about a traveling group of hoaxters who put on a show combining magic and "animal magnetism" (i.e., an early name given to hypnosis). When they arrive at a Swedish town, they are forced to come to an audience with the local official and his cronies who want to prove that the act is a fraud. Bergman really doesn't try to resolve this issue, but instead shows how the town officials are really rather petty and mean people. How this traveling group deftly survives this encounter is the main focus of the movie. I especially liked the portion of the movie about the autopsy. It sounds gross, but I thought it was actually kind of funny. One of the officials is a cold and rather nasty doctor who longs for a chance to do an autopsy on the hypnotist. He gets far more than he bargains for--that's all I really want to say--otherwise it might ruin the suspense.So, overall I liked the movie. It was not great but well acted and not the least bit depressing.