After Zorba the Greek, Hollywood called on Anthony Quinn to star in every subsequent movie set in Greece. Not really, but he certainly made a lot of them. In The Magus, he plays a weird magician who plays mind games on a young schoolteacher, Michael Caine. Tony lives on a remote part of the island, with caves and mysteries around every corner. Candace Bergen also lives on his estate, but her identity (and mental health) gets called into question more than once.

How does Tony know so much about Michael's past, to be able to torment him with his mind games? Why is he wearing a skullcap? Maybe he'll have some flashbacks, in which he gets to sport his regular black hair and play his younger self. Maybe Michael will also have some flashbacks, to try and explain why he's traveled to Greece and why he's so drawn to Candace.

This movie has a reputation of being extremely weird, and it is. Explanations merely lead to more questions, and very little is clear at the very end of the film. But if you like Greek scenery, and looking at two beautiful, young people falling into bed together while not knowing anything about each other, you'll probably be very happy with this movie.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. There are some canted angels and weird tilt/zooms throughout the movie, and iIt will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

Don't get me wrong. I've never tried the drug myself, but what I've read and learned about LSD is that it's a dangerous psychedelic drug. It produces hallucinations. Users see, hear and feel things that seem real to them, but don't really exist. So, this movie is like a big LSD trip. Or, it's plot, if one can call it that, is imaginary but it isn't. Or is it real and not imaginary?

I've never read any of John Fowles works. He was writing around the time I graduated from high school, served in the Army and went to college. I've heard and read about him, but his writing style and topics never appealed to me. So, I wouldn't be able to compare this film to his novel by the same name. But, I've always thought that a movie should stand on its own – no matter how faithful it is to its source material. That closeness or diversion from source material, of course, is one area of criticism. But, a film (or play) is based on a plot (or so we're taught in traditional theater) and much more. It's the story, the sets and scenery, the technical works, and most importantly, the directing and the acting.

"The Magus" seems to be "plotless." Unless one considers that the message or conclusion is that Nicholas Urfe, played by Michael Caine, is a self-centered, selfish, uncaring, pleasure-seeking, and otherwise heartless waste of a human being. But, I got that much in the first few minutes of the film – before all the machinations in the Mediterranean materialize (or, do they?).

I can't really say much about the acting because the roles are multi-faceted parts in a segmented plot that doesn't really exist. I know – it really doesn't make sense, does it? But, it's called art. I chuckle, and hope you do too.

So, Fowles wrote in the 1960s. That was the time of the hippies, the so-called sexual revolution, and the emerging drug culture. Timothy Leary was expounding on the merits of LSD. He taught at Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley. He surely had considerable influence with the young generation of that time (many of us excluded, of course). Perhaps he influenced Fowles in his writing. Or, was it the other way around? Or, perhaps mutual?

Whatever influences there were in the time of this film (also made in the 1960s, you will note),one today might choose between watching this movie or taking some LSD (is that the correct term?) to achieve the same effect. That is, minus any euphoria, if there is such associated with LSD. But, of course, I recommend neither. My three stars are for the beautiful scenery and camera work. I would have given one more, but the musical score was so bad and out of place that it even detracted from the scenery.

Incidentally, the movie is misleading on the meaning of the title. Anthony Quinn or Michael Caine's character explains that it is Latin for magic. That's a very minor definition. A Magus was a hereditary member of a pagan priestly class in ancient Media and Persia. The word is more commonly applied in modern times to sorcery. That's quite different from the tricks and illusions associated with modern magicians.

Being an arty psychological puzzle - and one which might well be not just incomprehensible but also meaningless - I'd always been interested in checking this film out; the fact that it was a critical and box-office failure made it doubly fascinating. Still, what must have seemed like the turkey of the year when new has, with time, acquired a certain charm all its own! On the surface, the film is certainly good-looking (shot by Billy Williams in numerous European locations, mainly a sunny Greek island) and boasts a fine score by Johnny Dankworth (which, in keeping with the film's theme, seems oddly unsuited to what's going on); the star cast responds competently to the mystifying plot (structured like a Chinese box - where past events are constantly re-enacted, identities exchanged and, of course, nothing is what it seems). Still, while Anthony Quinn may be everybody's idea of a Greek larger-than-life character, here he is saddled with an unbecoming Picasso hairstyle and, underneath it all, Michael Caine may well have been mirroring the bewilderment felt by his character since, in his autobiography, he singles out THE MAGUS as his worst film ever (though I personally would beg to differ and choose THE ISLAND [1980] for that unenviable spot)!

Actually, it all reminded me of L'INVENZIONE DI MOREL (1974) - another obscure island-set drama where a man intrudes upon a remote community sharing an exclusive fantasy existence: incidentally, that film was partly shot in my native country and also featured Anna Karina (who in THE MAGUS has the rather thankless role of Caine's jilted girlfriend - though her performance is quite good and his callous treatment of Karina has a strong bearing on the main character's ultimate personal growth) as the mystery woman who captivates the hero; with this in mind, as I lay watching the film under review, I wondered at the possibilities had Karina exchanged her role with that of Candice Bergen (who's too young for her role but great to look at nonetheless).

Then again, the subject matter was far more congenial to a Joseph Losey rather than the journeyman Guy Green...and one can only surmise how different - and more significant - the film would have been in the former's hands! As it stands, there are some undeniably compelling passages but also a lot of shallow modishness (the skin-flick with Bergen and Julian Glover[!] at the climax is plain risible) and lame moralizing (the WWII flashback scenes, featuring a bizarrely but effectively cast Corin Redgrave as the Nazi Commandant, being especially maudlin).

At several points towards the end, it feels like the story is coming to some sort of conclusion but it just goes on and on, peeling off yet another layer to the meandering enigma; to get an inkling of what the film is like, just imagine watching two of the more cerebral episodes of the cult TV series "The Prisoner" (1967-68) back-to-back! In hindsight, the film's epitaph may have been delivered by none other than Woody Allen who once remarked that, if he had to live his life all over again, he would do everything exactly the same...except watch THE MAGUS. As for myself, I wouldn't mind taking another look at it in future: by then I'd be over the initial "shock" and could perhaps appreciate it better...