“Subtitled ‘A Comedy' and usually described as a supernatural tale, The Magician testifies to Bergman's powers as entertainer. In fact, its central plot pits a theatrical illusionist against a skeptical scientist. The film romps between hypnotism, earthy sex, melodramatic thrills and, momentarily, becomes a desperate apologia for the artist humiliated as a charlatan by an audience demanding religious art. Set, like The Student of Prague and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, in the mid-nineteenth century, the film uses Expressionist techniques in its atmospheric opening (silhouettes of Vogler's Magnetic Health Theatre against the horizon, rays of light filtering through the mist as a carriage passes in mysterious silence through the forest) and its terrifying climax in the attic, as the dead artist haunts the skeptical doctor. Here Expressionistic devices project a visionary interiority as much metaphysical as psychological in an attempt to expose the fraudulence of modern rationalism.” William Nestrick