The Magus
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DVD details
Actor: Anthony Quinn, Michael CaineBrand: Twentieth Century Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; French (Dubbed)
Format: Color, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 117 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-10-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of The Magus
DVD Review: T. S. Eliot on the beach: history and psychiatry on a Greek Isle
Summary: 4 Stars
This is one film, based on the excellent existentialist novel by one of the greatest British authors since Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence, that should have been a success. After all, author John Fowles wrote the screenplay himself. Fowles admitted that he greatly admired Lawrence, and it is, therefore, a pity that this film version of his novel didn't turn out as well as film versions of Lawrence's SONS AND LOVERS and WOMEN IN LOVE.
I read the novel before I even went to college and discussed it with some of my newspaper colleagues. I didn't know anything about existentialism or the meta-theatre at the time, but I was still able to enjoy it as a compelling mystery-adventure in which the author took us through a labyrinth of twists and turns that seemed to come to life on the page because of his mastery with visual images. This novel, the first version printed a decade before his revised version, was, I thought, the best literary effort I had read since the American novelist Thomas Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL. Let's face it. Some novels -- as well as some films -- just hit us that way. Sometimes we don't even know why. When the film was released, I saw it with a friend who managed a small movie theatre in St. Charles, Missouri. He was totally lost by it, and like many others whose reviews appear on this page, slammed it mercilessly. I did enjoy the wide-screen vistas and the stunning DeLuxe Color cinematography of the Greek setting. I was impressed with how the scenes with the fake Nazi soldiers were contrasted with the scenes, from Conchis' memory, of the real Nazi soldiers, and of how the mystical figures from arcane mythology were brought to life for Urfe, played by Michael Caine in his salad days. I didn't hate the film as many others have, including Woody Allen. I just saw it as something different from the novel.
The extent to which readers are invited, or even required, to participate in a novel may actually be detrimental to a film adaptation. A novel such as THE MAGUS, which emphasizes participation in the narrative more than explanations and literal interpretations -- which involves readers experientially as well as intellectually -- creates its own deep impressions. Where these impressions are caused by the novel's imagery, conflicts may arise when the reader contrasts his/her mental image with the actual image produced on the theatre screen. If, for example, we agree with critics who feel that director Guy Green's straightforward point of view provides an objective, documentary realism, then we might find his filming of Fowles' script to be an odd mix when combined with the subjective flashbacks. One flashback, in fact, combines Conchis' reminiscences of his meeting and courting Lily (played in typical stiff fashion by Candice Bergen) -- told in silent images with Anthony Quinn's voice-over narration -- with images of authentic-looking enlistment posters superimposed over black-and-white drawings and newsreel-type footage of the First World War.
Other reviewers have compared this to a David Lynch film, and it does create an entertaining moment or two for us to speculate on what Lynch might have done with the material. At the time, the late sixties, someone even wondered what the film might have been like if Byron Forbes had directed this film, instead of Guy Green, in the style that he had directed DEADFALL about the same time -- with its flourishes of quick cutting and inter-cutting, beautiful images of Spain, and its soundtrack lushly filled with John Barry's haunting music. Maybe Forbes and Barry would have improved this film, and maybe Lynch could, today, give it the quirkiness that Fowles blueprints for us, but this isn't want happened. Critic John Russell Taylor even wonders what a Federico Fellini would have done with the complex story.
Green may resist throwing a circus of special effects at us, spicing up the complex tale with surrealistic wide-angle shots and zoom shots, but his point of view is hardly objective. Those critics who fault his point of view should not forget that Urfe's narrative in the novel is chronological, particularly as it details aspects of his early life. Only Conchis' installments of his early life, which exist as descriptively delineated stories within the larger story of Urfe's experience, disrupt the narrative structure. Green's film, in fact, dispenses with the book's lengthy beginning in London and uses flashbacks to deal with the necessary exposition. Immediately in the film we are shown a few 1960-ish quick cuts to show Urfe's thoughts, and though this technique does not occupy the majority of the film, it is effective as a tantalizing beginning.
Perhaps I defend this film THE MAGUS because I waited a long time for it, as well as Forbes' DEADFALL, to appear on DVD. Finally, long after I needed it for my dissertation on John Fowles, which later became the book POINT OF VIEW IN FICTION AND FILM: FOCUS ON JOHN FOWLES (sorry for the shameless plug for a work that is no longer in print), the DVD appeared. Seeing it on a sharp-imaged, wide-screen DVD after many years -- even after Fowles revised his own novel in the last 1970s long after the film version that was based on his first version -- was thrilling. It was fun to see Urfe (Caine) again read the quote from T.S. Eliot from a book conveniently left on the beach with a ribbon indicating a significant passage for him; it was fun because I had studied Eliot in the intervening years and now had a new appreciation for why this one quote was significant to Urfe's (Caine's) character.
Maybe someday the BBC will film a longer version and add the necessary scenes that were omitted from this version, but this is outside speculation. We must, in a true existential sense, deal with what we have. After all, we have seen countless other films that received higher praise that probably did not deserve it. We have seen garbage movies thrown onto a DVD for no visible reason other to make a buck or two. THE MAGUS, at least, whatever its perceived faults, is a classy production with a young Michael Caine, the always superb Anthony Quinn, and the lovely Anna Karina (Mrs. Jean-Luc Godard) who plays Urfe's original love interest as French instead of the Australian air hostess that she is in the book.
But if the BBC doesn't make a satisfying version of this modern classic, call David Lynch.
Description of The Magus
Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 10/17/2006 Run time: 117 minutes Rating: PgBestsellers in DVD
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