The Magician

Adapted from the Somerset Maugham novel inspired by the life of Aleister Crowley, a bizarre melodrama which starts in Paris and moves to the Riviera: the sinister Dr Haddo (Wegener) uses hypnotism to kidnap a young woman (Terry) on the eve of her wedding, because he needs the blood from a virgin's heart to complete the formula for a homunculus. Ingram's strengths were mainly pictorial, and he here delivers plenty of high-flown images. Best of all is the sequence in which Haddo transports his victim into a Bosch-like vision and hands her over to a naked satyr for his nameless pleasures. Of great historical interest as the missing link between German expressionism and Hollywood fantasy. Michael Powell worked on it as assistant director.