Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and the New Magic of the Twentieth Century

by Matthew Solomon

Disappearing Tricks revisits the golden age of theatrical magic and silent film to reveal how professional magicians shaped the early history of cinema. Where others have called upon magic as merely an evocative metaphor for the wonders of cinema, Matthew Solomon focuses on the work of the professional illusionists who actually made magic with moving pictures between 1895 and 1929. The first to reveal fully how powerfully magic impacted the development of cinema, the book combines film and theater history to uncover new evidence of the exchanges between magic and filmmaking in the United States and France during the silent period. Chapters detailing the stage and screen work of Harry Houdini and Georges Méliès show how each transformed theatrical magic to create innovative cinematic effects and thrilling new exploits for twentieth-century mass audiences. The book also considers the previously overlooked roles of anti-spiritualism and presentational performance in silent film. Highlighting early cinema's relationship to the performing body, visual deception, storytelling, and the occult, Solomon treats cinema and stage magic as overlapping practices that together revise our understanding of the origins of motion pictures and cinematic spectacle.

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Steve Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read this recently. (to be honest, I don't recall much from my first reading.)

My reaction? The book seemed like it didn't know what it wanted to be in many ways. Was it it a book about Early Silent Film? Stage Magicians? Spiritualists? Harry Houdini? At times, I even wondered whether Georges Melies's name should be in the title. There is a considerable chunk of the book devoted to him.

That doesn't mean I didn't find the book interesting because I did. For instance, who knew that the Kevin Bacon Number is 1 between Houdini (he of the stage name after Robert-Houdin) and Monsieur Melies? (he with the theater named after Robert-Houdin). Well, it turns out that Harry actually saw Georges perform.

I probably had less knowledge of Houdini going in; so, I probably learned the most on that topic. Oh, I was aware of his main films and that he had made a bit of pre-1910 film footage. I learned plenty though about his importing and enhancing (with himself appearing) a couple foreign films (e.g. Soul of Bronze) as well as a couple of tantalizing aborted concepts that were never shot (with the undersea wizards, the Williamson Brothers, no less).

My biggest takeaway? It has to be how many danged individuals did actually have at least marginal involvement as stage-bound conjurers and movie makers in some capacity. (I counted at least 15 but NO SPOILERS here. You'll have to read the book!)

[Donna-Jo Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched, scholarly work examining the earliest days of cinematic history and the real-life magicians who helped create it. Not as much on Houdini's film work as I expected, but interesting, nonetheless.