The Magician 1926, a horror film based on W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, stands out for its gothic atmosphere and Paul Wegener’s sinister portrayal of Oliver Haddo, says DAVID TURNBULL
TITLE: The Magician
RELEASED: 1926
DIRECTOR: Rex Ingram
CAST: Alice Terry, Paul Wegener, Iván Petrovich,Firmin Gémier, Gladys Hamer, Henry Wilson,
Hubert I. Stowitts
Review of The Magician 1926
The 1926 silent movie version of W Somerset Maugham’s novel, The Magician, with a running time of one hour and 20 minutes, is one of the earliest full length horror films.
It was directed by Dublin born Rex Ingram and distributed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Ingram’s previous films had included The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and Scaramouche (1923).
His future wife, American actress, Alice Terry, appeared in all three of these movies.
Ingram cast her in the leading role of Margaret Dauncey in The Magician 1926. At the time they were living on the French Riviera and had built their own private film studio in Nice.
As a consequence, most of the rest of the cast of The Magician are European actors. Serbian Ivan Petrovich plays surgeon Arthur Burdon. French actor, Firmin Gemier, plays Doctor Perhoet and English actress, Gladys Hamer, plays Margaret’s friend Susie Boyd.
The role of the monstrous magician, Oliver Haddo, went to German expressionist actor and director, Paul Wegener, who had already established his horror credentials in The Golem (1915) and its follow ups The Golem and the Dancing Girl (1917) and The Golem: How He Came To Be (1920). He’s the perfect choice for Haddo – larger than life, with a malevolent stare in his eyes that eerily depict the magician’s supernatural ability to mesmerise.
Location shots were mainly filmed in France and the Riviera. The film opens in a suitably gothic manner with the gargoyles on Notre Dame looking down on Paris. We see streets filled with early versions of motor cars in fitting with the novel’s Edwardian setting.
While the main plot is reasonably faithful to Maugham’s novel, in terms of Haddo’s seduction and corruption of Margaret. Ingram tops and tails it with some additions of his own in the opening and closing sequences.
Margaret is introduced as a sculptress working in a studio located in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Her companion Susie is an aspiring painter. When the huge statue of a mythical faun that she is working on collapses onto her, the ensuing spinal injury leaves her paralysed. Doctor Perhoet, in Ingram’s script her uncle and guardian, enlists the services of the imminent surgeon, Arthur Burdon.
He performs his ground-breaking surgery to a public audience gathered around his operating theatre. It is here that Oliver Haddo, as a member of the assembled audience, first sets his sights on Margaret.
The plot follows Haddo’s malicious pursuit of the fully recovered Margaret. He needs the blood from a maiden’s heart for an ancient alchemist formula which will allow him to create a new life form. There is a wonderfully surreal sequence when he places her in a hypnotic trance and her faun sculpture comes to life. The faun, played by American ballet dancer, Hubert I Stowitts, shows Margaret and Haddo a terrifying but seductive subterranean netherworld.
Ingram moves the location of Haddo’s laboratory from a mansion on a desolate English heath to a crumbling tower on a remote French mountain peak. He also gives Haddo a dwarfish ‘Igor’ type assistant, an entirely new character played by Hendy Wilson.
Both additions blend well with the mood of the film, the tower looming portentously above the village below and the atmospheric scenes of Haddo and his diminutive assistant ascending interior spiral staircase serving as precursor to the type of imagery Universal Pictures would depict five years later in their interpretations of Dracula and Frankenstein.
Although Haddo is ultimately defeated in Maugham’s novel, Margaret unfortunately loses her life, and the malevolent magician has some success in creating hideous life forms. Ingram affords a happier ending. Haddo is defeated before he can create the new life form and Margaret is saved, to fall into Arthur’s arms as the evil magician’s tower erupts into flames in the background.
The publicity poster for the original film promises special music on an ascending Wurlitzer. The restored version has a score which aptly compliments the drama and tensions of the plot. As with the novel, the film of The Magician is well worth discovering.
Read more about the original source material for this film in David Turnbull’s article on W. Somerset Maugham’s The Magician.
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