ANSIKTET (The Magician, 1958) **1/2 The stakes are raised early on, with the incredible shots of the carriage riding through the smoke and forest. The film is worth watching for those few moments alone, Ingmar Bergman gets so many more colours and textures from black & white than most Hollywood directors could get even if aliens landed and handed them five new primary colours to work with. That and everything else being what it is you'd expect that Ingmar has a great deal to say about magic and magicians: the commoners fear it and pretend not to believe in order to contain their fear, the magicians are tormented in an inimical world-not least by financial problems, the commoners don't understand the origin of occult powers and frankly neither do the practitioners, the magicians fake it-almost always-but the commoners don't bother trying to tell the difference-those who want to believe it do no matter what, skeptics may be shaken but not enough honestly think about what's happening. It works well as a drama and the acting is very good (and Naima Wifstrand stands out as as a good deal better than that), but as a commentary on magic the big statement is what a Norse genius can do with a camera, a few friends, and some lights.
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