Ingmar Bergman's The Magician (Ansiktet) is an engaging, brilliantly imagined narrative of deceit from among cinema's premier illusionists. Max von Sydow stars as Dr. Vogler, a nineteenth-century travel mesmerist and peddler of potions whose magical is put to the test from Stockholm by the unkind, eminently rational roy-al medical adviser Dr. Vergérus. The outcome is just actually a diabolically clever battle of wits that is both amusing and frightening, taken at gorgeously gothic white and black.