Its a film I was disappointed with. The acting was overboard by and the direction was wayward. I thought that the director Ingmar Bergman sought to offer us a mystique spell and took the help of Magic and illusions in this. The visuals are nice but there is haphazardness in the placing of scenes. The characters seem to have been half baked and not fully evolve. There are not enough reasons presented as to why anything happens. The climax makes the whole film comical, gesturing that we can get away with whatever crime we did, if the intentions are for good.It's not about the realities we live with but more-so about the imagination of director. I really if the story was about the magician or is it it about something else called the imagination of the magician. Why he goes after people who are not for him, how he gets selected suddenly by the king at the end? Questions left unanswered do not satisfy the hunger of watching this, and rather left me in lurch and disappointment. The acting was mediocre considering that it was Max Von Sydow, arguably a great Swedish actor who played the protagonist. I did not understand his angst nor did I get to know what the silences meant. The others (I do not remember their names) are just OK. The sound track is great, the guitar was used generously and creates the mood nicely. The cinematography was just right. The art direction is extravagant perhaps adhering to the need of the period in which the film was set. The editing could have been way better. The moments where Grandma speaks some lines could have done in a better way or better chopped off. It's an average watch and not a fully satisfying one for me. A 2/5 for this.

I'm slowly making my way through the Bergman canon (thank you Netflix) and am having a ball. I saw this film about forty years ago and forgot how captivating it is. Things are not as they seem anywhere in this movie. People die and come back to life, some can speak and then they can't. It has great villains and an incredible cast. Of course, it's the story of a group of traveling showmen who arrive at the home of some wealthy people. They are seen as an inferior class and are forced to grovel before they can earn their livings. They participate in byplay with those who have come to see them (some from the local village), including he servants. There is sexual activity and a lot of manipulation. When the actual magic show begins, we are in on some of the tricks, but others are unexplainable. These people seem able to act on the minds of the characters and get them to expose their dirty secrets. But, as we see, there are other forms of magic, not just the dark kind. Watch this a couple of times. You won't be disappointed.

It is true that this is a great film, as many other users have stated, it has an original script and it is very stunning. It has a very good moral, that of the one that pulls others' legs and finally he is the object of scorn. It shows us as well how anyone can be stubborn with no limits and how people can be hypocritical. However, the end doesn't help to consider it a master's work. It is a very happy ending that it is not just possible to believe (suddenly, comedians are engaged by the king, after having suffered from the scorn of the bourgeois). Let me laugh! Mr Bergman should have made more attention to that cheesy happy ending!

a group of people is touring the countryside in a coach. they include a purported magician (max van sydnow), his wife/assistant, an old crone who they refer to as grandmother and who gives an impression of practicing witchcraft and a merry, complacently fat coachman. on the way they encounter a man who is dying of alcoholism, who stirs up some deep feelings in the magician. when they reach a city, the man dies and they fall in the clutches of the city magistrate on account of this and other matters. the elite of the city bands together to watch the magician's magic show. they mock the magician cruelly, accusing him of being a charlatan, a fake. after the show, the magician plays a series of tricks on the parties, which scares the hell out of them, and makes it seem like supernatural forces are present among them. but, in the end, his tricks are revealed and in an astonishing moment, the magician forgetting all his dignity and composure, grovels for a few kronor's (dollars). not getting even a single kronor, they are threatened with jail if they don't get out of town immediately and henceforth continue on their journey. many people do not get this movie, given that the artist/magician is shamed at the end. but that pivotal scene is totally misunderstood...bergmann's movie's work on many levels and that which is presented plainly is often the least plain, much like the magician's magic. the magician/artist is correctly depicted as being unsure of whether he really is an artist or a fake. the conflict within him is part of being a real artist. bergmann's point was that art and magic are similar. illusion is but a feint, a parry in a different direction, while the audience is lured unsuspecting into a bigger trap, which when revealed is devastatingly powerful in what it says about their psyche. the magician's magic is concerned not with tricks but with subtle psychological manipulation. when the extent of his psychological grasp is revealed in the end, he is immediately hated, because he understood his audience better than themselves. their whole mirage of being the superior scientific elite is shattered. about the only complaint one could make about this movie is that the magician is overly tormented. as in other bergman movies, one wonders what is the source of this torment. while it could be explained, it's best to enjoy this additional hue to the wonderful masterpiece, that is this movie, and let it percolate in your psyche. it goes without saying that the performance of the actors was superb, really exemplary. as was the cinematography. you will not see better cinema than this.