JIFF: The Magician of Lublin (1979)

The Story

The Magician of Lublin

Yasha (Alan Arkin) is an escape artist and seductive magician in a vividly recreated turn-of-the-20th-century Poland. Erotically fascinating to women, he can make neither money, nor peace with his soul. His guilt drives him crazy, leading to a radical solution.

November 5. 2pm

Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick

Yasha (Alan Arkin), is an escape artist and seductive magician in a vividly recreated turn-of-the-20th-century Poland. From the mesmerising opening scene on a tightrope far above the street, demonstrating the precarious balancing act that is his life, we see beneath him the pimps, prostitutes, and thieves, the honest poor and the genteel melancholics who people his sensualist’s world. Yasha’s crowded journeying as he performs in town and city, complicated by all the women who love him, leads only to guilt and self-disgust. In a surprising ending, his pendulum swings to another extreme to find balm for his tormented soul.

Rating

M

Duration

114 min

Director

Menahem Golan