The Magus * (1968, Anthony Quinn, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, Anna Karina) – Classic Movie Review 9546

Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, Candice Bergen and Anna Karina are in trouble in director Guy Green’s murky, muddled and meandering 1968 film of the then in-vogue John Fowles novel The Magus.

As screenwriter, Fowles just does not seem to be able to cut a swathe through the labyrinth of his own novel about a young British graduate called Nicholas Urfe (Caine) who comes to teach English on a small Greek island, where he encounters a mysterious master trickster magician, Maurice Conchis (Quinn), The Magus of the title. Urfe gets mixed up in Conchis’s psychological illusions, which become more and more serious and darker and darker.

Billy Williams’s cinematography is a highlight.

Also in the cast are Paul Stassino, Julian Glover, Takis Emmanuel, George Pastell, Danièle Noël [Danielle Noel], Corin Redgrave, Jerome Willis, Ethel Farrugia, Andreas Malandrinos, Anthony Newlands and Roger Lloyd Pack. John Fowles has a cameo as the boat captain

It was a critical and commercial flop. Fowles blamed Guy Green and vowed never to write another screenplay. The only subsequent cinema adaptation of any of his books is The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), adapted by Harold Pinter. Previously to The Magus, however, The Collector (1965) had gone well.

The Magus is directed by Guy Green, runs 117 minutes, is made by Blazer Films, is released by 20th Century Fox, is written by John Fowles, based on his own novel, is shot by Billy Williams, is produced by John Kohn and Jud Kinberg, is scored by Johnny Dankworth and is designed by Don Ashton.

It was shot mainly on Mallorca, Islas Baleares, Spain, and at Spetses Island, Greece.

John Fowles (31 March 1926 to 5 November 2005): ‘I think the common man is the curse of civilisation, not its crowning glory’.

Fowles’s postmodern metafiction novel The Magus (1965) is the first novel written by Fowles, but the third he published. He published a revised edition in 1977. He based it on his experiences on Spetses Island, where he taught English for two years at the Anargyrios School.

Caine says The Magus is one of his worst films, along with The Swarm and Ashanti, because no one knew what it was all about.

The top eight worst Michael Caine movies? The Island, The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, The Hand, Jaws: The Revenge, The Holcroft Covenant, The Magus and Ashanti.

Candice Bergen recalled: ‘I didn’t know what to do and nobody told me. I couldn’t put together the semblance of a performance.’

It cost $3,775,000, and needed $7,000,000 in rentals to break even, but took only $1 million at the US box office, and by 11 December 1970 had made only $2,450,000.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9546

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com