As he explains in the first chapter, stage magicians employed their trickery to encourage skepticism rather than cultivate faith in the supernatural. Solomon starts his study with a look at the spiritualist movement of the late nineteenth century and the role of stage magicians in exposing some of their more outlandish claims.

Situating Harry Houdini at the fulcrum upon which the study hinges, Solomon argues that the use of magic in many early films elucidates the dual use of the new art form to both capture actuality and create illusions. Tracing a continuum of illusion from the stage acts of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin to the cinematic conjuring of Georges Méliès, Solomon showcases the blurry boundaries among spiritualism, realism, and spectacle that marked early twentieth-century performances.

The discourse of “magic” has often been invoked to describe both live theatre and movies, but Matthew Solomon’s fascinating study documents the explicit connections between performed stage magic and the cinema throughout the latter’s early days.

Houdini tricks