The Magician - 1958

Ingmar Bergman's The Magician (Ansiktet) can be an engaging, brilliantly imagined tale of deceit in among cinema's premier illusionists. Max von Sydow stars as Dr. Vogler, a nineteenth-century travel mesmerist and peddler of potions whose magical is placed to the test in Stockholm by the unkind, eminently rational royal medical advisor Dr. Vergérus. The result is just a clever battle of wits that is both funny and frightening, taken at gorgeously darkened black and white.