Magicians in Trick Films Preview

Magicians in Trick Films
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These films feature magicians as characters, using editing to accomplish the magic, and also occasional sleight-of-hand. In a few of these clips, the actors are actual magicians. Despite the use of edits, these movies provide important glimpses of how magic was presented in the Victorian era and how the public perceived magicians.
25 min.
7 films. Includes:
Scène d'Escamotage (A Vanishing Act, 1898): Director by Alice Guy-Blaché. A magician changes a woman into a man, then performs a series of vanishes and reappearances. The conjurer wears the standard long coat of the period and his stage has an orange tree like that of French master magician Robert-Houdin.
The Waif and the Wizard (1901): Directed by Walter R. Booth. Walter R. Booth (1869-1938) was a stage magician and director who appears here as the conjurer. The magician helps his young volunteer's ill mother by making healing herbs appear and turning the landlord into a servant.
The Ill-Rewarded Conjurer (1905): Directed by Ferdinand Zecca. Parodying the Parisian magic venue named for famed magician Robert-Houdin, the conjurer leaves
his "Théâtre Albert Boudin." He magically provides new clothes and a good meal for a beggar, but returns him to poverty when the man proves ungrateful.
The Magician's Alms (1905): Directed by Alice Guy-Blaché. In this imitation of Pathé's "Ill-Rewarded Conjurer," a magician rolls up his banner after a bar show and toasts the owner and hostess, then magically helps a beggar. When the man turns away the disguised conjurer, the magician changes him back.
Le Roi des Dollars (The King of Dollars, 1905): Directed by Segundo de Chomón. This extraordinary film features a magician's hand performing sleights with coins, only occasionally aided by editing. The hand may be that of performer T. Nelson Downs.
Willie's Magic Wand (1907): Directed by Walter R. Booth. A magician amuses a child by producing a doll from a tube and changing it. As he reads a newspaper he has materialized, the boy pilfers his wand and creates mischief around the house.
Slippery Jim (1910): Directed by Ferdinand Zecca. This cinematic Houdini evades the police with a clever series of camera effects in which he vanishes, transforms, and escapes in various ways. The officers are also comically injured and restored several times.