Prestige - the masters of magic

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Movie
German title Prestige - the masters of magic
Original title The Prestige
Country of production United States , United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2006
length 125 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Christopher Nolan
script Jonathan Nolan
Christopher Nolan
production Christopher Nolan
Aaron Ryder
Emma Thomas
music David Julyan
camera Wally Pfister
cut Lee Smith
occupation
synchronization

Prestige - The Masters of Magic (Original title: The Prestige ) is an American - British thriller by Christopher Nolan from 2006, based on the novel The Magician's Cabinet (1995) by Christopher Priest . The film is awarded by Touchstone Pictures and Warner Bros. Worldwide, the film grossed almost 110 million US dollars . The German theatrical release of the 40 million US dollar film was on January 4, 2007.

action

The 19th century is drawing to a close. In London , the two budding learn magicians Robert Angier and Alfred Borden know. What both have in common is their fascination for magic and the endeavor to amaze their audience with previously unseen magic tricks. The two start a friendly competition with the help of the veteran decorator Cutter.

Angier's wife Julia, who is on stage as an assistant, drowns in a water container during a spectacular trick after she was unable to untie a knot that Borden had tied in time. Angier blames Borden for her death, and the men break up. After successfully sabotaging each other's performances, with Borden losing two fingers, they part ways. Borden marries and has a daughter named Jess, which annoys Angier, who is mourning his wife.

As the film progresses, Borden, who is now working with the designer Bernard Fallon, goes public with a completely new performance that brings him a large audience: with the help of an unknown trick, it seems to be possible to move from one end of the stage to the other to teleport . Angier is jealous and wants to discover the secret of Borden's trick "The transported man". But in contrast to the usual performances of the time, the trick is apparently perfect and the secret cannot be unraveled. With the help of Cutter, Angier developed his own version of the magic piece, for which he used a doppelganger to create the illusion of teleportation: “The new transported man” is celebrated by the audience as a successful, improved copy because of its presentation. But that does not satisfy Angier, he wants to discover the secret of Borden's trick at all costs. He sets his stage assistant and lover Olivia as a spy on him.

A short time later, Borden captivates Angier's stage doppelganger and thus reveals his trick. In return, Angier receives an encrypted notebook from Olivia’s help. Together with Cutter, he kidnaps Borden's outfitter and blackmailed the key word that is necessary for deciphering : “Tesla” - meaning electrical engineer Nikola Tesla , whose exhibition both of them had previously visited. Believing Borden to help him, Angier travels to Colorado Springs , where he meets Tesla, who is himself in a competition with Thomas Edison and is considered a brilliant scientist because of his achievements in the field of electricity. During the trip, Angier discovers that the notebook was just the wrong track and that he fell victim to a plot by Borden and Olivia, who defected to him. Olivia has now apparently become Borden's lover, which puts additional pressure on his already strained marriage and ultimately leads to the suicide of his jealous wife Sarah.

Tesla can still help Angier: He provides him with a mysterious device with which he can outdo Borden's transportation trick. Angier returns to London and sets exactly 100 performances for his performance of the “true man in transport”: Every evening he surpasses Borden's trick by not only teleporting across the stage, but also up to a box in the theater within a few moments ". Borden now wants to discover Angier's secret and visits his presentation. Since he spotted a trap door, he went under the stage, and during the trick, Angier actually fell from his apparatus under the stage - into a water tank that was automatically closed. Although Borden tries to free him, Angier dies; Borden is caught by the theater staff right now, so it looks like he has locked the water tank. He is arrested for murder and sentenced to death by hanging. But as it turns out, Angier is still alive. However, he does not reveal himself to the judiciary, but now lives under his original name Lord Caldlow, so that Borden is executed as an alleged murderer.

In the final scene, Angier is visited and shot down by Borden's assistant Fallon - but the latter looks exactly like Borden. Only now does it become clear that Borden actually had a twin brother. Both brothers always took turns in their camouflage: when one appeared as Alfred Borden, the other took on the role of his supposed assistant Bernard Fallon. This was the secret behind Borden's version of “The Transported Man”: It was a perfectly staged doppelganger trick. This went so far that one of the twins amputated two fingers when the other lost his through Angier's sabotage. Borden also reveals to the dying Angier that he was the one who always loved his wife Sarah, while his twin brother found love in Olivia. Thus, Jess' biological father, Alfred Borden survived while his brother was the one who was hanged. When Borden leaves the storage room lit by Angier's kerosene lamp, one sees a dead copy of Angier in one of the many water tanks.

Only in this final scene does it become clear what the difference was in the performances of the two competing magicians. The Borden twins lived a life together both privately and on stage and thus became part of their own total work of art. Angier, on the other hand, doubled himself in every single performance using Tesla's apparatus: Tesla's apparatus is therefore able to create a clone of the person using the apparatus. Angier never knew beforehand whether he or his clone would drown in agony in the water tank or whether he would reap prestige in the end.

production

Director Christopher Nolan works again with Christian Bale and Michael Caine after Batman Begins in this film . He is also continuing his longstanding collaboration with film composer David Julyan and cinematographer Wally Pfister , who are involved in almost every one of his films. The shooting lasted from January 9th to April 8th 2006. Analysis , the song in the credits, comes from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and can be found on his solo album The Eraser .

Ricky Jay , who plays the magician Milton in the film , was actually a magician too, and helped Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale improve their manual dexterity. Jay was considered to be one of the most experienced and skilled magicians in the fields of card art, cheating, card throwing, closeup and mental magic. Like the magicians in the film, Jay also had a rival: After criticizing David Copperfield's Magic Museum, he was banned from the house.

The disappearance method used in the film, in which a bird dies every time, is purely fictional and corresponds to the fatal doppelganger theme.

synchronization

The German synchronization was based on a dialogue book by Änne Troester and the dialogue direction by Tobias Meister on behalf of FFS Film- & Fernseh-Synchron GmbH in Berlin .

actor role German voice
Hugh Jackman Robert Angier / Root Thomas Nero Wolff
Christian Bale Alfred Borden / Fallon David Nathan
Michael Caine cutter Jürgen Thormann
Scarlett Johansson Olivia Wenscombe Luise Helm
Rebecca Hall Sarah Borden Manja Doering
David Bowie Nikola Tesla Frank Glaubrecht
Andy Serkis Alley Jörg Hengstler

Historical background

The electricity war between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla , which is dealt with in the film, really did exist. While Edison was making use of direct current , Tesla and industrialist George Westinghouse were working on a method of using alternating current . In the fight for the still young electricity market, Edison, a pioneer of the incandescent lamp , is said to have been able to use any means. Edison had animals including an elephant killed with high-dose alternating current in order to prove how dangerous and thus unsuitable the concept of the competition is. Ultimately, however, Edison could not prevent the triumph of alternating current.

The film contains numerous allusions to actual events by well-known illusionists around the turn of the century.

  • The American illusionist Harry Kellar stole the secret of the floating man from his British colleague John Nevil Maskelyne by luring his stage helpers away.
  • The magician Harry Houdini went so far in competition that he anonymously leaked his colleagues' secret tricks to the press and even published them himself. When he performed tricks, he even published his own tricks, but claimed that these were the methods of his imitators. Like the magicians in the film, Houdini also had a 26-year feud with a certain "Hardeen" until his death. Both put on the same show and accused each other of intellectual theft. In fact, Hardeen was Houdini's half-brother, and the Vendetta was a carefully staged PR ploy.
  • The film shows Chung Ling Soo , who was killed in the bullet trick also themed in the film. After his death, it turned out that Soo was in fact not a Chinese, but a disguised white American named William E. Robertson, who maintained the illusion of a Chinese outside of the theater by giving interviews only through interpreters.
  • The electronic magic used in the film is reminiscent of the controversial shows by "Dr." Walford Bodie , who generated Tesla lightning bolts on stage and electrified the audience.
  • The scene in the cemetery alludes to the “buried alive” illusion that Houdini planned but rejected as too dangerous. Unleashing in a glass water tank was also an invention of Houdini, who was the first to combine the art of escaping with the risk of death.
  • The most successful magicians of the time actually included two brothers, the Davenport Brothers, who officially appeared as a duo.
  • In the background you can see an advertising poster for a magician named Harry Dresden. Harry Dresden is on the one hand a hero (magician) of a successful dark fantasy series by the author Jim Butcher , on the other hand it could be an allusion to Houdini, who in 1900 demonstrated an underwater unleash for the first time in the Dresden Elbe.
  • The otherwise not too common with magicians dressing up with z. B. false beards may also be inspired by Houdini, who explored the spiritist scene undercover in the 1920s.

criticism

“An intelligently and amusingly staged entertainment with nice references to film history. Christopher Nolan's film offers just as many traps and tricks as the life story of the two magicians themselves, which continues to hold new confusions and puzzles up to the end. "

- Lexicon of international film

“The combination of material and director couldn't be more appropriate: The Prestige tells the story of two rival magicians in London at the turn of the century in a unique, if not magical, way. Nobody except Nolan could have accomplished this feat so masterfully. "

- Daniela Leistikow

“This time the director doesn't rely on the effect of a single 'final gag'. One cinematic secret is nested inside the other like in a Chinese magic box. As soon as you think you couldn't be surprised anymore, the next shoot comes, which pulls the plot in a completely different direction. However , this does not detract from the credibility of The Prestige . With each new piece of information, the cinematic puzzle makes more sense. Even if at the end of a scene a lot appears different than at the beginning.

- Sebastian Geiger

“Great images and well-dosed effects: Once again, Christopher Nolan proves himself to be a guarantee for high-quality commercial cinema. He effortlessly combines historical film ingredients with thriller and sci-fi elements. Result: A captivating magic on the screen! "

- Jens Golombek

“With magic, Christopher Nolan has found a terrific metaphor for filmmaking. […] Narrated in a gripping manner and staged very dynamically […] flawless actor management […] 'Prestige' is a highly intelligent entertainment film that also touches on complex and existential topics. This also applies to the fact that the latest technology always works a little like magic. - Predicate particularly valuable "

- Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden

"With" The Prestige ", Christopher Nolan has once again staged Méliès' magic trick, which at the same time represents the end of the old stage magic and the beginning of the new film wonder. As an homage and morality on magic and the cinema. "

- Johannes Binotto

Awards

At the 2007 Academy Awards , cinematographer Wally Pfister and the two production designers Nathan Crowley and Julie Ochipinti were nominated, but could not win an Oscar. Crowley also received a nomination for the Art Directors Guild Award , while screenwriters Jonathan and Christopher Nolan were nominated for the 2007 Online Film Critics Society Award . Prestige - The Masters of Magic was also nominated for the best science fiction film and for the best costumes for the Saturn Award and won the Curts Siodmak Prize in 2008 for best science fiction film.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Prestige - The Masters of Magic . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2007 (PDF; test number: 108 612 DVD).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Prestige - The Masters of Magic . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b The Prestige (2006). In: Box Office Mojo . Amazon.com , accessed December 12, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Prestige. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous file , accessed on August 1, 2017 .
  5. ^ WDR.de: Edison and the river war
  6. ↑ Prestige - The Masters of Magic. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ^ Filmstarts.de: Critique by Daniela Leistikow
  8. ^ MovieMaze: Critique by Sebastian Geiger
  9. ^ "The Prestige" by Christopher Nolan. Johannes Binotto, January 1, 2007, accessed on May 25, 2019 .