The Magician

Rex Ingram, MGM, 1926, from Somerset Maugham’s 1908 novel. Paul Wegener is Oliver Haddo, who finds a formula for making life and needs the blood of a virgin. Alice Terry, Ingram’s wife, is Margaret, a sculptor hurt while working on a faun; Iván Petrovich the surgeon who loves her. John F. Seitz photographed France and a tower. Haddo is Maugham’s Aleister Crowley sketch. Wegener, after The Golem, plays the hypnotist as a European import. Ingram shot abroad, away from Culver City. The laboratory is the last act.