The Magus (1968)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Guy Green

Writers:

John Fowles (novel) and
John Fowles (screenplay)

Release Date:

10 December 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Fantasy

Plot:

A teacher on a Greek island becomes involved in bizarre mind-games with the island's magus (magician) and a beautiful young woman.

Plot Keywords:

Teacher | Mind Game | Tarot Card | Female Nudity | Flashback Sequence

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award.

Cast

Michael Caine	...	Nicholas Urfe
Anthony Quinn	...	Maurice Conchis
Candice Bergen	...	Lily
Anna Karina	...	Anne
Paul Stassino	...	Meli
Julian Glover	...	Anton
Takis Emmanuel	...	Kapetan
George Pastell	...	Andreas
Danièle Noël	...	Soula
Jerome Willis	...	German Officer
Ethel Farrugia	...	Maria
Andreas Malandrinos	...	Goatherd
George Kafkaris	...	2nd Partisan
Anthony Newlands	...	Party Host
Stack Constantino	...	3rd Partisan

Also Known As:

The God Game (UK) (working title)

Runtime:

117 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

UK:X | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain

Company:

Blazer

Trivia:

Final film of George Pastell.

Quotes:

Nicholas Urfe: This thing, it's like being halfway through a book. You can't just throw it in the dustbin.
Anne: So you throw me instead?
Nicholas Urfe: I'm trying to be honest.
Anne: Honest? It's just like in London. You haven't changed. I'll always be that French girl who slept around. A human boomerang. Throw her away and she'll always come back for another week of duty-free sex.
Nicholas Urfe: That's below the belt!
Anne: Your natural territory.

THE MAGUS (Guy Green, 1968) **

Being an arty psychological puzzle - and one which might well be not just incomprehensible but also meaningless - I'd always been interested in checking this film out; the fact that it was a critical and box-office failure made it doubly fascinating. Still, what must have seemed like the turkey of the year when new has, with time, acquired a certain charm all its own! On the surface, the film is certainly good-looking (shot by Billy Williams in numerous European locations, mainly a sunny Greek island) and boasts a fine score by Johnny Dankworth (which, in keeping with the film's theme, seems oddly unsuited to what's going on); the star cast responds competently to the mystifying plot (structured like a Chinese box - where past events are constantly re-enacted, identities exchanged and, of course, nothing is what it seems). Still, while Anthony Quinn may be everybody's idea of a Greek larger-than-life character, here he is saddled with an unbecoming Picasso hairstyle and, underneath it all, Michael Caine may well have been mirroring the bewilderment felt by his character since, in his autobiography, he singles out THE MAGUS as his worst film ever (though I personally would beg to differ and choose THE ISLAND [1980] for that unenviable spot)!

Actually, it all reminded me of L'INVENZIONE DI MOREL (1974) - another obscure island-set drama where a man intrudes upon a remote community sharing an exclusive fantasy existence: incidentally, that film was partly shot in my native country and also featured Anna Karina (who in THE MAGUS has the rather thankless role of Caine's jilted girlfriend - though her performance is quite good and his callous treatment of Karina has a strong bearing on the main character's ultimate personal growth) as the mystery woman who captivates the hero; with this in mind, as I lay watching the film under review, I wondered at the possibilities had Karina exchanged her role with that of Candice Bergen (who's too young for her role but great to look at nonetheless).

Then again, the subject matter was far more congenial to a Joseph Losey rather than the journeyman Guy Green...and one can only surmise how different - and more significant - the film would have been in the former's hands! As it stands, there are some undeniably compelling passages but also a lot of shallow modishness (the skin-flick with Bergen and Julian Glover[!] at the climax is plain risible) and lame moralizing (the WWII flashback scenes, featuring a bizarrely but effectively cast Corin Redgrave as the Nazi Commandant, being especially maudlin).

At several points towards the end, it feels like the story is coming to some sort of conclusion but it just goes on and on, peeling off yet another layer to the meandering enigma; to get an inkling of what the film is like, just imagine watching two of the more cerebral episodes of the cult TV series "The Prisoner" (1967-68) back-to-back! In hindsight, the film's epitaph may have been delivered by none other than Woody Allen who once remarked that, if he had to live his life all over again, he would do everything exactly the same...except watch THE MAGUS. As for myself, I wouldn't mind taking another look at it in future: by then I'd be over the initial "shock" and could perhaps appreciate it better...