Black Magic Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Black Magic Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 24, 2022

Orson Welles had an apparently lifelong love of magic, and there's a certain (perhaps sinister) ebullience to his work in Black Magic, a 1949 supposed biography of Alessandro Cagliostro and a film which kind of strangely is often either more or less skipped over or omitted entirely from overviews of Welles' work. Sandwiched in between much better remembered outings (at least to contemporary audiences) like 1948's Macbeth and a film which came out a bit later in 1949 than this one, The Third Man, it's actually not hard to understand why Black Magic isn't especially celebrated, but it's a rather interesting film that manages to weave together a few verifiable historical facts along with a considerable dose of whimsy, all within the context of both the simmering sociopolitical environment of France right at the cusp of the Revolution, and the history of what was alternately known as either mesmerizing or hypnotizing.

The film actually begins with a kind of fun vignette involving Alexandre Dumas père (Berry Kroeger) and fils (a rather dashing looking Raymond Burr), with Dad complaining that the character of Cagliostro has taken over as a kind of pseudo-muse. Kind of hilariously, in terms of injecting "history" into supposedly "casual conversation", junior tells his Pa that since Pa listened to junior talking about Camille last week, junior will listen to dear old Dad talk about Cagliostro this week, and so we're off on a journey with Dad acting as a recurrent narrator, something that may give a certain kind of distancing to the story.

The story finds a young Cagliostro, then known as Joseph Balsamo (Annielo Mele), caught up in some "ethnic" controversy, since he is part of a Gypsy clan which includes his parents, notably his mother, who was born with a "sixth sense" and who has correctly predicted the illness of a baby of a local couple. When the baby dies, the mother is accused of witchcraft, and the evil martinet Viscount de Montaigne (Stephen Bekassy) sentences both the mother and father to hang. When little Joseph bites the Viscount in a feral reaction, the Viscount sentences the child to be whipped and then have his eyes destroyed with a red hot poker. Fun times. Suffice it to say, while the parents do indeed perish, little Joseph is saved by friendly Gypsy Gitano (Akim Tamiroff), and grows into a kind of traveling medicine show huckster (now played by Welles), albeit with a "peculiar set of skills" of his own that allows him to basically put people into a trance and do his bidding. That captures the attention of local doctor Franz Anton Mesmer (Charles Goldner), who sees Balsamo as the living embodiment of a technique that Mesmer himself has been attempting to get accepted by medical professionals, without success.

Kind of interestingly, given that the actual historical record has tended to consign Mesmer to the same "charlatan" status as that afforded Cagliostro, he's presented in this film as being far too honorable for the mendacious and social climbing Cagliostro to want to collaborate with. Instead, Cagliostro ends up in a rather bizarre conspiracy involving Lorenza (Nancy Guild), a troubled woman that Cagliostro's longtime nemesis the Viscount has more than a passing interest in, but who also just happens to be a dead ringer for Marie Antoinette. The result is almost ludicrously over the top, but screenwriters Charles Bennett and Richard Schayer, adapting Dumas' Mémoires d'un médecin: Joseph Balsamo, manage to work in enough pseudo-history to keep things bizarrely interesting.

The film has some Wellesian style (Welles supposedly co-directed at least some sequences with Gregory Ratoff, without receiving credit), and it has a nicely luxe production design (though some modern day occultists and/or conspiracy theorists may giggle at seeing what is more or less the Masonic compass and t-square adorning Cagliostro's fez). Welles is in hyperbolic mode virtually all of the time here, which works perfectly for the character. Guild is a ravishing physical presence but may do better as the haughty Marie Antoinette than the supposed "main" character she's playing. A colorful supporting cast not limited merely to the always enjoyable Akim Tamiroff also helps to give this film some energy.

Black Magic Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Black Magic is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ClassicFlix with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. ClassicFlix doesn't provide any significant technical information on the release other than to state it's "newly restored and making its Blu-ray debut". This is another generally very nice looking transfer from ClassicFlix. While there are some occasional quality fluctuations, contrast is by and large quite satisfying, supporting the near chiaroscuro cinematography from Ubalda Arata and Anchise Brizzi (whose names may hint that this was shot in Italy). Detail levels are quite appealing throughout, and fine detail benefits from Ratoff's (and/or Welles') penchant for close-ups. The film has a lot of opticals and even a couple of quasi-montages, and there are the typical upticks in grittiness of grain and lack of clarity in such moments. There are some hairline scratches that have made it through whatever restoration gauntlet was undertaken, some of which can be spotted by the more eagle eyed carefully perusing the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, but they're all relatively minor in my estimation. My score is 3.75.

Black Magic Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Black Magic features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono track that shows pretty consistent hiss and background noise, but which still manages to convey all of the (sometimes florid) dialogue and Paul Sawtell's nice score effectively enough. There's a slightly phase-y quality to a few large crowd scenes, but individual dialogue moments are rendered without any real issues whatsoever. Optional English subtitles are available.

Black Magic Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While there is a Bonus submenu offered on the Main Menu of this disc, that turns out to be trailers for other releases from ClassicFlix, and per my traditional history, I don't consider those to be "scorable" supplements. A trailer for ClassicFlix's release of Tomorrow Is Forever plays automatically at disc boot up and cannot be chapter skipped through (fast forward works).

Black Magic Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Synchronicity Gods are once again at work with my review queue. I just reviewed Agatha and the Truth of Murder, a rather interesting British made for television movie which, kind of like Black Magic, attempts to weave real historical characters (in that case, Agatha Christie) into a fictional story (albeit with "real life" elements still at play). As if that connection weren't enough, in doing some background research in preparation for writing this review, I was reminded that, much as Agatha and the Truth of Murder has Dame Christie acting as an investigator looking into a murder, the 2006 film Fade to Black posited Danny Huston as Orson Welles looking into a murder during the production of Black Magic. "Meta" issues aside, Black Magic may be hokum as history, but it's kind of fun and stylish. This release sports generally solid technical merits (video probably more than audio), and comes Recommended.