JoeytheBrit
No doubt this film was intended to wow early 20th century audiences with its conjuring tricks but, of course these are not so impressive today. After all, to show a magician's 'tricks' through the use of stop-motion photography defeats the object really: the magic's being performed behind the camera here rather than in front of it.What I liked about the film was the two Chinese assistants who magically appear from the conjurer's magic box, both grinning inanely with their index fingers pointing skywards. It was probably a racial stereotype back then, but it made me laugh. Check them out holding a smiley, pointy-fingers-in-the-air conversation in the background while the magician goes about his business. Hilarious.
bob the moo
Two magicians make people appear and disappear in front of our very eyes in this colourful French short film. Modern audiences will not be amazed at all by the appearing and disappearing characters but at the time I can imagine it was met with "how did they do that" gasps. However watching it now is still a wonderful experience because this was almost exactly a hundred years ago when this sort of thing was new and being thought up as these films were made. New ideas were being taken and expanded upon and used in different ways.This film simply gives the producers a structure to play within. There is some humour but really this is all about the visual effects and with the colours on top of that it makes it interesting to watch when you have a feel for what the historical context you are watching it within.
MartinHafer
This film is very entertaining, and if I had not already seen "Le Thaumaturge Chinois" by Georges Méliès, I would have no doubt scored it higher. That's because "Le Thaumaturge Chinois" was in many ways the exact same film but made several years earlier! It was not very uncommon in the early days of cinema for studios to plagiarize the work of their competitors. Today, they would have no doubt been sued for this, but in the "wild and crazy" days of early cinema, it was not very unusual. However, I also have to admit that Magic Bricks perhaps a little better AND it also is totally hand-colored! Nice stuff, but hardly original!
karl-68
this movie is very familiar to george melies movie tchin chao the chinese conjurer from 1904 but melies worked with living animals and pathe did not he uses some other techniques,i see it as a remake of melies work.
AD
