The Illusionist, 2006. Written and directed by Neil Burger. Starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell, Eddie Marson, and Jake Wood.
Nightmare Alley, 1947. Directed by Edmund Golding, written by Jules Furthman. Starring Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray (rrowr), Helen Walker, Ian Keith, George Beranger, Taylor Holmes and Mike Mazursky.
The Illusionist is playing exclusively at the Uptown Theater; Nightmare Alley is available on DVD at Cinema Revolution.
My father is–was–a magician, having set aside his practice for the time being to focus on teaching grade school. I tell you that in advance because watching him perform his slight of hand was always a source of deep wonderment for me as a child, and every time I hear there’s a film about a magician I’m ready to be awed again. For the longest time, I refused to listen to his explanations of how he was able to perform his tricks, like the fabulous sword through the card trick. With his back turned, my pop would ask his young assistant to pick a card, any card, and show it to the audience and don’t be shy. That’s good, now shove it back in the deck. And then, he would explain, the idea was to go presto! and find the card by impaling it on a sword. Only, he would say sheepishly, that was how it was supposed to go–he couldn’t afford a nice sword so he chose the next most dangerous thing you could get in Saginaw, Michigan: a model M150 Victor Model Rat Snap Trap, a nearly foot long instrument of death. So now the subject would take the deck, hold it up high and let the whole thing fall like leaves into a basket below. And then bang! there would be the card caught dead-to-rights like a rodent with its neck snapped. That was pretty damn cool.
Thing is, over the years I came to understand that the magic isn’t in his being able to seemingly read your mind and make cards appear out of nowhere, but in the care he took to perfect the craft, the way that my dad would take old tricks (and any magician will tell you they’re all old) and make them new again, with a simple twist and turn in the story or a touch of personality. For great magicians are storytellers and comedians, singers and actors. They make you look at one hand while they’re doing what they need to do with the other. When they get it right, it’s magic.
The Illusionist doesn’t get magic at all. It doesn’t get the craft, doesn’t get romance, simple storytelling, or acting, even. Like most films about conjurors, the filmmakers are so caught up in the wow! of a trick that they miss the performer and what he does. The Illusionist is a perfect example of a film that so deadens the art of legerdemain by turning it into a collection of CGI effects and giving us one of those surprise endings that have, as of late, become the bane of decent storytelling.
On the other hand, there’s Nightmare Alley. I stumbled on this little gem once again at the local DVD store (I saw it originally at the beloved Oak Street). It is a movie that, despite its handicaps, understands what magic can be. And how a man who can master the art of slight of hand and mind-reading can get warped by it.
To wit: Nightmare Alley is a beautiful and exciting picture, well told and decently acted; The Illusionist is garbage, and will be forgotten in a matter of months.
The facts: The Illusionist is about a young man named Eisenheim (I’ll give them that that’s a great name) who tries to learn the ‘ancient arts’ of magic at a young age. He is a poor boy who falls in love with a beautiful and wealthy young girl named Sophie (Jessica Biel) of tremendous privilege. Because of the class difference, Eisenstein and Sophie are forcibly separated as teen-agers, with passionate vows between the two of them that they will reunite. And reunite they do, much later, when he has become a magician extraordinaire, able to make orange trees grow three feet in seconds.
Well, the Illusionist isn’t too happy to see that now his love has hooked up with mad Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), who is known to have beaten past lovers senseless and wants a quick path to the throne. Apparently, marrying the well-connected, pretty, but dull Sophie is the right way to become king. But Eisenstein gets in his way, thwarting the prince, stealing the girl, and in the end hoodwinking the respectable Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti), who has been following Eisenstein around the whole picture, apparently because there are no other crimes in the kingdom.
Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti are awful. Simply horrible. I have a suggestion to make, for anyone who cares to listen, but especially the director of this fraudulent film: you don’t have to set the movie in Russia just because the story takes place there. Especially when your actors cannot carry their accents without sounding like something from Monty Python. Even then, the Pythons were better.
Aside from the silly accents, the acting is atrocious and the story is as boring as a children’s party clown who shows up forlorn from an impending divorce. Implausibility is piled atop implausibility, and Edward Norton and Jessica Biel have no chemistry whatsoever. The evil prince, played by Rufus Sewell (who is gaining prominence, God knows why), is wonderful because he gives you moments of much needed laughter in between the long stretches of boredom. That he does this unintentionally doesn’t matter much if you’re stuck looking for something to enjoy in a long, tedious movie.
For a film that is ostensibly about a magician, there is no magic. True, there’s Ed Norton squinching his face at his hands while a ghost appears, although you could visit Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion and get better effects. You could also check out Woody Allen’s much-maligned Scoop and get better slight of hand. But even the scenes that bubble-over into full stage illusion, such as the orange tree bit and the ghost bit, have no personality from Eisenstein. He’s dead up there. And in magic, dead you just can’t be.
Nightmare Alley, on the other hand, is a hoot. Stanton Carlisle (played by Tyrone Power, and barely credible) is a flunky who’s working the carnival circuit to make ends meet. He’s nothing more than a roustabout who wanders the grounds doing the dirty work, admiring the fetching Molly (the sexy Coleen Gray), and working on the sly with aging Zeena Krumbein (played by Joan Blondell, with great sympathy). Zeena’s married to the alcoholic Pete, and between them they have a dynamite mind-reading act. Zeena’s keen on Stanton; Stanton’s keen on Molly, but even more keen on the sawbucks he could rake in if he got hold of Zeena’s formula for mind-reading. Naturally, he sleeps with Zeena and then double-crosses her, and accidentally murders Pete along the way. He also steals good-hearted Molly from her lunkheaded strongman (Mike Mazurski, bless his soul). From there, he leaves the carnival behind and hits New York, where he begins to con the wealthy with his act, until his ambitions undermine his rise to the top, he is himself double-crossed by a bitch female-psychiatrist (!), and spirals to the bottom in one of the most harrowing finales ever.
Nightmare Alley understands magic. That is, it doesn’t seek to make your eyes grow wide with wonder at the fabrications you’re seeing. Based on the incredible novel by nutty William Lindsay Gresham (who was at one time married to the doomed woman who would go on to wed C. S. Lewis, their story becoming Shadowlands), Nightmare Alley is concerned with the people who practice magic, who live to hone their art so well that they can fool anyone, even the authorities if need be. Eventually, they get so good at it they fool themselves into thinking they’re invincible. In the end, by avoiding soulless special effects, Nightmare Alley becomes a magical picture, in the sense that is awes you with its characters, and may make you even more intrigued by the art of these charlatans.
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