This film adaptation of John Fowles' acclaimed novel, scripted by the author, is sumptuous, presumptuous--and dead. Michael Caine alternately looks suspicious and confused as a British poet-turned-teacher, newly-arrived on the Greek island of Phraxos, who is 'summoned' to the seaside estate of Anthony Quinn, who claims to be psychic. Quinn's mysterious Maurice Conchis may be alive or dead--but don't call him a ghost. He tells the young man of his childhood--a life that may never have happened--and of a test he underwent during the war, perhaps a time that is intersecting now with the present. Conchis' long-deceased true love suddenly appears and flirts with the teacher, though she tells him she's an actress hired by Conchis, who is really a movie producer. Gorgeously-presented film is a curiosity that soon loses its captivating sheen (it doesn't so much fall apart as it does roll over). Caine's past love affair with a volatile, apparently promiscuous French airline hostess is full of melodrama (and a coy sex scene) which keeps intruding on the narrative; we are, of course, to see that the teacher's path in life will always lead back to the beginning, but with this rocky affair it only seems like a dead end. Candice Bergen is the otherworldly seducer, and she certainly speaks like one (almost as if she were dubbed). If all the world's a stage, the curtains come down on this charade after about an hour. ** from ****
Review of The Magus
