Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998)

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Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006)

There haven’t been all that many successful movies made about magicians. Not white-bearded wizards or spellcasting warlocks, mind you – I’m talking about realistic illusionists. The movies are there, don’t get me wrong, but if you compare the number of movies strictly about magicians with just about any other subject matter, you’ll find the department in question … lacking.

It’s not difficult to see why making a decent movie about magicians is near impossible. The ONE thing that magicians have going for them is their ability to seemingly defy natural law right in front of an audience’s eyes. That’s just what they do. Unfortunately, a filmmaker would be hard-pressed to evoke a similar sense of awe and amazement in a movie about magicians because today’s society doesn’t trust what they see on a screen anymore. Since the dawn of modern special effects, we’ve had to abandon any notion that something amazing in a movie actually happened. Any trick that a magician could perform could be so easily replicated with special effects, it wouldn’t be worth an audience’s attention.

Keeping this in mind, you can tell why Christopher Nolan (Memento, Dark Knight trilogy) was the perfect man for the job of making an amazing movie about magic. When The Prestige was released in 2006, it had to compete with the precedent set by Neil Burger’s The Illusionist which had hit theaters just two months prior. Burger gave moviegoers a dramatic love story – sure, he used a conjurer as the vehicle by which he could tell it, but it was centrally a love story. Burger recognized that creating a good tale strictly about magic was doomed to fail and created an entirely different set of tensions within the plot. I actually really enjoyed The Illusionist, but in my mind it was nothing compared to The Prestige.

And that’s because Nolan figures out how to make a successful movie about magicians. Instead of trying to make a movie about magic tricks, he makes his own magic trick. The Prestige itself is one big artifice. I think that’s part of what makes it such an enjoyable movie. Probably the most significant lines from the movie are spoken by the magicians’ stage engineer, Cutter:

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called ‘The Pledge.’ The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird, or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course … it probably isn't. The second act is called ‘The Turn.’ The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret … but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige.’"

I won’t ruin the plot by explaining exactly how the movie fits perfectly into Cutter’s explanation of what makes a great trick, but I promise that it does. Nolan doesn’t try to amaze us with tricks performed by the magicians (although I loved the way he showed how some of their tricks were performed); instead he amazes us with the trick of his own while actually managing to focus entirely on the lives of two magicians throughout the story. By doing this, Nolan is finally able to evoke that sense of open-jawed bewilderment in his audience that no other movie about magic could ever accomplish. He brings the awe of watching a magic trick in person to the big screen, which is why I call The Prestige one of his greatest works.

Christian Koch
Film Club Co-President

Mel Brooks' The Producers (1967)

It's time for another "Film Club Dialogue," tonight featuring Miriam Tibbets, Film Club's own Anarchist and Film Club's adviser, Mr. Findlay. Tonight's topic: cult films.

Miriam: Why are cult movies considered “cult”?

Findlay: Um, because they band together and practice strange rituals at midnight?

M: Maybe, but Wikipedia says it’s because of their dedicated fanbase, an elaborate subculture that engages in repeated viewings, quotes dialogue, and participates in some form audience participation.

F: Like when people throw rice and toilet paper and shout rude things at the screen during The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

M: That too.

F: So it’s the audience that acts like a cult, not the movie. But what does this have to do with tonight’s movie The Producers by Mel Brooks?

M: How could The Producers not be cult film? Any film whose plot includes a washed-up Broadway producer (played by Zero Mostel) and a nebbishy accountant (played by Gene Wilder) creating a musical called “Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden” deserves the esteemed title of “cult.”

F: So, does the audience participate? I’m not sure I want to see a bunch of high school students singing and dancing along to “Springtime for Hitler” or dressing up as Nazis. Even if it is a comedy.

M: The Producers made my father sing out “Springtime for Hitler” at the very mention of this movie.

F: No doubt your father sings along with a lot of movies. Has he seen Mulan?

M: Maybe; we’re getting off topic. Cult films also have a status that places them outside the mainstream. They’re movies that are overlooked by most people, even as they become hugely popular with a small “in-group.” They also tend to have story elements that challenge mainstream values.

F: Ah, like the movies of John Waters, most of which we can’t show at Movie Night. But wasn’t The Producers fairly popular?

M: Yes, it was. Many critics, who usually disregard movies that later achieve cult status, celebrated Mel Brook’s comedy. But it does approach a serious topic with a kind of humor that a lot of people might find offensive.

F: Like making a musical about Hitler.

M: To quote the movie, “Not many know it, but the Fuhrer was a terrific dancer.”

F: Now that’s funny.

M: I’m a huge fan of satire and black comedy, the sort of elements one often finds in a cult movie.

F: Sure. That reminds me of one of my favorite cult films, Eating Raoul. It’s about a dinner party, and I’ll let you guess who’s for dinner.

M: Ewww.

[Pause]

F: I think there's another really important aspect of the cult film definition we haven't talked about.

M: What's that?

F: "Camp." Typically this refers to the mocking of conventional values. More specifically, camp art attacks "straight" values with a homoerotic subtext.

M: Are we still talking about The Producers?

F: Well, yes. But a more familiar example might be the 1960s Batman movie which we showed last year.That depiction of the Batman character is frequently described as "campy" because its presentation of a male superhero who speaks in decisive exclamation points in such an over-the-top comic manner calls into question the conventional attitudes about manliness. Just look at his tights, his eyebrows painted onto his cowl, Robin's cute little slippers.

M: Right. And The Producers has the same kind of subtext. The flamboyant effeminacy of the character, L. S. D., and the whole "Springtime for Hitler" show, in fact.

F: Exactly. That's campy. And that's a key component of a lot of cult films. For an odd comedy about a couple of guys trying to make a terrible Broadway musical, The Producers has enjoyed a pretty long life. It got made into an actual Broadway musical in 2001, and then that got made into a new film musical in 2005.

M: Raising another question: Why do people insist on remaking movies already held in high regard?

F: Maybe film-makers in the 21^st century have run out of ideas. Or they just know it’s easy to make money when you give the film-goer something familiar.

M: Well, enjoy this original version of the movie. And join the cult, too, for heaven’s sake! We sacrifice goats to Mel Gibson at sunset.

Miriam Tibbets (Film Club Anarchist) and R. Findlay (Film Club Adviser)