Perhaps the only thing Alfred Hitchock’s The 39 Steps and the 2000 movie The Illusionist have in common is a similar location, one in a 1930s era London music hall and then, the London Palladium, and the other in a turn of the 20th century music hall in Prague. The Illusionist, supposed to take place in Vienna, was filmed in the Czech Republic. In any case, it is that setting that prompts me to write about them both in the same breath. Plus, I like both movies.
Who doesn’t evoke intrigue better than Hitchcock did? A Hitchock movie, such as North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much possesses more allure and guile in its little finger than most contemporary movies. Speaking of little fingers, the man with the tip of his missing turns up unexpectedly in The 39 Steps, revealing himself to a dashing protagonist as precisely the spy he ought to try to avoid.
Both Hitchcock movies revolve around the lot of fairly ordinary but exceedingly clever men going about the slightly unordinary business of their lives when they find themselves at the mercy of someone representing a threat to national security. It isn’t generally in the interest of the country that our man acts, but in the interest of saving himself, or his child, and a beautiful blonde female companion.
The Illusionist portrays a magician and a police inspector toward the end of Archduke Ferdinand’s reign as emperor of Austrian Hungary. Screenwriter Neil Burger adds more characters and elongates others in a screenplay he based on Millhauser’s short story Eisenheim the Illusionist. A love story intertwined with political intrigue drives the movie which is also well stocked with magical tricks true to the era. I was as fascinated Edward Norton in the role of the magician as any corseted Victorian lady in lace and leather watching from the back of the theater. The magician seduces because he is the embodiment of mystery. Neither the police inspector nor Crown Prince Leopold, mad with jealousy at the magician’s special powers, can unravel his mystery. In this these oddly matched movies share a common denominator, after all. There is one sure way a hapless everyman can transcend organized crime if he is brilliant. And that’s by eluding it.
