A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A Disappointing Continuation

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

"Magic Bricks" is a French 3-minute short film by Spanish director Segundo de Chomón and those who only know about the very basics of silent film have certainly come across the name already as he comes right after Méliès in a group of prolific and successful filmmakers that also include Griffith for example. But SdC is certainly closer to Méliès from what we see here too. Magic shows were a common subject in these movies that are over a century old, actually almost 110 years old in this case. The big special thing in here, however, is not the plot or the acting or the magic, but the use of color which was really not common at all at that point. Hell half a century later, the majority of films were in black-and-white. So today we of course don't really see color as something special, but back then it absolutely was. Still I would say that everything taken together here, it was not a great film, not among the best of its era or from its filmmaker. I give it a thumbs-down this time.

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.

There are lots of visual effects and camera tricks in this short feature about "Magic Bricks", and most of them work well. Evaluated solely in terms of technique, it's quite good. The material itself, though, is rather bland, with only a couple of really interesting moments.The movie shows two conjurers performing an act together, using boxes, blocks, and other similar props. Except for one or two of the tricks later in the show, most of their tricks are not especially interesting in themselves, and the main reason to watch this film is to see how the camera was used to create illusions that would otherwise have been difficult or impossible to make.Most of the visual effects work well, and they give the appearance of having been set up and filmed with care. The film was also hand-tinted in color, although much of the color has now faded. The technical and production end are pretty good, and they make it watchable in spite of the somewhat drab nature of the material itself.

This film has special effects which for it's time are very impressive. Some if it is easily explainable with the scenes played backwards but the overlay of moving images on an object on film is surprisingly well done given that this film was made more than 94 years ago.