The Magician

Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1958, 101 minutes

Rating: R16

The Magician is one of Bergman’s most enigmatic films, perhaps his underground masterpiece, one of the keys to his cinema. Traveling actors, maids flirting about, a love potion, a happy ending, and diabolical apparitions – Bergman gives himself to the vertigo of quoting himself. Mourning his past, he makes an inventory of his themes in order to proclaim their end, bringing back all his characters, all his actors, who return for a bow. Everything is there, everyone is there, but beneath, abstraction is at work, mystery rumbles,