DEATH RITE (Magiciens, Les) (director/writer: Claude Chabrol; screenwriter: Paul Gégauff; cinematographer: Jean Rabier; editor: Monique Fardoulis; cast: Franco Nero (Sadry), Stefania Sandrelli (Sylvia), Jean Rochefort (Edouard), Gert Fröbe (Professor Vestar), Gila von Weitershausen (Martine), Moheddine Mrad (doctor), Jalla Baccar (Sadry's Sister), Madame Ben Chadly (Sadry's Mother), Habib Chaari (Balloon Seller), Cecile Labussiere (Caterina); Runtime: 94; 1976-France/West Germany/Italy)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
One of Chabrol's weaker films. There wasn't much magic in the magic show he put on. The video version I saw was badly dubbed in English and showed Tunisian subtitles. It's a B-mystery story that engages the occult for its plot, as it asks you to believe that there are clairvoyants who could see what is pre-destined. Death Rite is set in a ritzy tourist hotel on an island in Tunis, that has open skies, a beach, a desert, and palm trees.
As a plane lands in Tunis, a performing magician, Professor Vestar (Fröbe), gets a ride from another passenger, Edouard (Rochefort), to their hotel. After Edouard explains himself as a wealthy idler, who came here to rest and watch the tourists, the magician makes him stop at a spot in the desert where he says he had a vision a woman would be strangled with a noose. In his vision he saw red spots in the sky at the time of the murder.
Also on the plane were a young couple, the beautiful but spoiled European, Sylvia (Sandrelli), who already has a headache, and her Tunisian-born husband who rose from poverty to work in Paris as an architect, Sadry (Nero). They seem to have nothing in common, but he's attracted to her beauty. She has never met his mother and doesn't want to meet her, but he came home to visit his dying mother. The couple is also staying at the ritzy hotel.
Martine (Weitershausen) is an attractive brunette who is staying at the ritzy hotel, and she's Sadry's mistress.
Out riding again in the desert, on the day after the magician performed at the hotel, they witness a woman fall off her horse. She's Sylvia and the magician has a vision that someone willed her to die.
Edouard is absorbed by these visions, not claiming to believe or not believe them. But he says he has nothing else in life to do but think, so he gleefully meddles in this affair. When the magician says he must leave tomorrow and work in another country, Edouard offers to double his wages if he works for him, instead.
Another troubling vision about the expected murder is told to Edouard, this time it involves a figurine bought at the place where Sadry's father worked as a potter. It is prophesized that Martine will buy it and give it to Sadry as a gift, who in turn will give it to his wife. Edouard upsets the couple by separately telling them about the magician's doomed prophesy, as Sadry loses his temper with the magician and berates him in public. The magician is certain that Sylvia is doomed.
The climax builds to when Sylvia catches her husband embracing Martine and the visions of the prophesy begin to unfold. Edouard seems to want to help things along by buying a bunch of red balloons on the beach and giving it to a little girl to hold. When he returns she moved to a different spot, but they still release the balloons. This changes how the vision unfolds.
Chabrol is having some fun spoofing the conventions of magic and the rationality of science, and how the idle rich have nothing to do in this world but make trouble. The story was slight, the suspense was not earth shattering, and it resulted in film that hardly mattered.
REVIEWED ON 8/2/2001 GRADE: C -
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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