MISANTHROPIA: The Magician (1958)

Monday, July 4, 2011

The Magician (1958)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Directed by Ingmar Bergman - Produced by Allan Ekelund - Written by Ingmar Bergman - Starring Ingrid Thulin, Max von Sydow, Naima Wifstrand, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Bibi Andersson, Erland Josephson
- Music by Erik Nordgren - Cinematography Gunnar Fischer - Editing by Oscar Rosander - Distributed by AB Svensk Filmindustri - Release date(s) 26 December 1958 - Running time 107 minutes - Country Sweden - Language Swedish

The Magician is a 1958 film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Its original Swedish title is Ansiktet, which means "the face", and it was released theatrically as The Face in the United Kingdom, although video releases have used the U.S. title.

The film stars Max von Sydow as a traveling magician named Albert Vogler. Reading reports of a variety of supernatural disturbances at Vogler's prior performances abroad, the leading townspeople request that Vogler's troupe provide them a sample of their act, before allowing them public audiences. The scientifically-minded disbelievers try to expose them as charlatans, but Vogler has a few tricks up his sleeve.

The film was distantly inspired by G. K. Chesterton's play Magic, which Bergman numbered among his favourites. Bergman actually staged a theatre production of "Magic" in Swedish at one point.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magician_(1958_film)

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Freedom

1.
The state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint.

2.
Exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.

3.
The power to determine action without restraint.

4.
Political or national independence.

5.
Personal liberty, as opposed to bondage or slavery.

6.
Exemption from the presence of anything specified.

7.
The absence of or release from ties, obligations, etc.

8.
Ease or facility of movement or action.

9.
Frankness of manner or speech.

10.
General exemption or immunity: freedom from taxation.

11.
The absence of ceremony or reserve.

12.
A liberty taken.

13.
Civil liberty, as opposed to subjection to an arbitrary or despotic government.

14.
The right to frequent, enjoy, or use at will.

15.
The power to exercise choice and make decisions without constraint from within or without; autonomy; self-determination.

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"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches."

"In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine."

"Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior."

"Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying."

"Martyrdom ... is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability."

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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Hymn to Lucifer

Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
To glut brute appetites, his sole content
How tedious were he fit to comprehend
Himself! More, this our noble element
Of fire in nature, love in spirit, unkenned
Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.

His body a bloody-ruby radiant
With noble passion, sun-souled Lucifer
Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant
On Eden's imbecile perimeter.
He blessed nonentity with every curse
And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense,
Breathed life into the sterile universe,
With Love and Knowledge drove out innocence
The Key of Joy is disobedience.

ALEISTER CROWLEY

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Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring.

From the same source I have not take My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I loved, I loved alone.

Then- in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still:

From the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.

EDGAR ALLEN POE

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"Every man is his own hell."

"Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself—by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true."

"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters."

"Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time."

"To sum up:

1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.

2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.

3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride."

H. L. MENCKEN

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Litanies of Satan

Wisest of Angels, whom your fate betrays,
And, fairest of them all, deprives of praise,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

O Prince of exiles, who have suffered wrong,
Yet, vanquished, rise from every fall more strong,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

All-knowing lord of subterranean things,
Who remedy our human sufferings,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

To lepers and lost beggars full of lice,
You teach, through love, the taste of Paradise.

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You who on Death, your old and sturdy wife,
Engendered Hope — sweet folly of this life —

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You give to the doomed man that calm, unbaffled
Gaze that rebukes the mob around the scaffold,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You know in what closed corners of the earth
A jealous God has hidden gems of worth.

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You know the deepest arsenals, where slumber
The breeds of buried metals without number.

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You whose huge hand has hidden the abyss
From sleepwalkers that skirt the precipice,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You who give suppleness to drunkards' bones
When trampled down by horses on the stones,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You who, to make his sufferings the lighter,
Taught man to mix the sulphur with the nitre,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You fix your mask, accomplice full of guile,
On rich men's foreheads, pitiless and vile.

Satan have pity on my long despair!

You who fill the hearts and eyes of whores
With love of trifles and the cult of sores,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

The exile's staff, inventor's lamp, caresser
Of hanged men, and of plotters the confessor,

Satan have pity on my long despair!

Step-father of all those who, robbed of pardon,
God drove in anger out of Eden's garden

Satan have pity on my long despair!

Prayer

Praise to you, Satan! in the heights you lit,
And also in the deeps where now you sit,
Vanquished, in Hell, and dream in hushed defiance
O that my soul, beneath the Tree of Science
Might rest near you, while shadowing your brows,
It spreads a second Temple with its boughs.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

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Love

Love is the only bow on life’s dark cloud.

It is the Morning and the Evening Star.

It shines upon the cradle of the babe,
and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb.

It is the mother of Art,
inspirer of poet, patriot, and philosopher.

It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home,
kindler of every fire on every hearth.

It was the first to dream of immortality.

It fills the world with melody,
for Music is the voice of Love.

Love is the magician, the enchanter,
that changes worthless things to joy,
and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay.

It is the perfume of the wondrous flower — the heart
and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon,
we are less than beasts;
but with it, earth is heaven
and we are gods.

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

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Quoth the Doctor...

"You can't erase millions of years of human response, simply by knowing why you do the things you do.

Not if they concern the rules of the chase.

Religions and ideologies will come and go and the games will begin and end, but man's basic nature will remain the same.

Yet only through understanding himself will he be able to embrace and cherish the demon within him.

Then he can revel in his nature and feeling glad, move on to the Final Solution."

ANTON SZANDOR LAVEY

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