The Magician

The young sculptor Margaret Dauncey can walk again after an operation on her spine; Arthur Burdon, the surgeon who performed it, is in love with her. Then Oliver Haddo appears: a man who has declared himself a magician and can bring people under his will. Margaret cannot resist him. Why Haddo needs her is another matter. Rex Ingram's silent film is adapted from Somerset Maugham's novel of 1908. Maugham said he wrote the book's magician with Aleister Crowley in mind but that it was not a portrait, adding that he had made the character darker and more powerful than the man ever was. Haddo is played by Paul Wegener, known for the Golem films. The hallucination sequence with its satyrs is the passage people talk about most.