Magic in the Moonlight
All team (111)
Short description
In the late 1920s, an English magician named Stanley Crawford performs under the stage name Wei Ling Soo and has built a reputation for debunking people who claim to speak with the dead. A friend and fellow performer persuades him to travel to the French Riviera, where a young American medium called Sophie Baker is staying with a wealthy family and apparently guiding them with messages from the spirit world. Stanley arrives under a false identity, intending to expose her, but the two are drawn to each other and his certainty about what is real begins to weaken.
Woody Allen directed and wrote the film, which came between Blue Jasmine and Irrational Man as the forty-second of the forty-eight features he has directed. Colin Firth plays Stanley and Emma Stone plays Sophie, with Hamish Linklater, Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver and Erica Leerhsen in supporting roles. The production, made with British, American and French backing, cost about 17 million dollars and took roughly 51 million dollars worldwide.
On IMDb the film holds 6.5 out of 10 from around 73,000 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 6.5 out of 10 from about 2,200 votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 189 reviews places it close to those audience scores rather than far above or below them.
What's left behind the scenes
- Emma Stone says that in working on the image of Sophie and bringing it to life on screen, she drew inspiration from the performance of Diane Keaton, the actress who starred in many Woody Allen films.
- During the opening credits of the film, classical music is heard – excerpts from the ballet 'The Rite of Spring' (Igor Stravinsky), 'Boléro' (Maurice Ravel), and the second part of Symphony No. 9 (Ludwig van Beethoven). Later, Beethoven will be heard again in the film.
- The script mentions at least three songs by Queen – Made in Heaven, A Kind of Magic, and It's Late.
- One of Howard’s cars is a red 1928 Alfa Romeo 1600 Sport.
- Stanley owes his pessimism and outlook on life to the works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), a renowned German philosopher who is repeatedly mentioned in the film.
- In the opening scene, the text in the background is written using simplified Chinese characters, which were not introduced until 1935 and officially adopted in mainland China only in the mid-1950s.
- In one scene, Sophie asks for a phone in Aunt Vanessa's house. Later in the film, it can be noticed that the phone is located right by the door, next to where she was standing.
- Woody Allen's fourth film after 'Manhattan' (1979), 'Something's Gotta Give' (2003), and 'Blue Jasmine' (2013) to be shot in the anamorphic 'Cinemascope' format.
- Stanley (Colin Firth) says in the film that his favorite musical piece is Beethoven's 7th Symphony. Colin Firth delivers a speech to this composition at the end of the film "The King's Speech" (2010).
- Wei Ling Soo, Stanley's stage name, is a reference to Chen Lian-su, the name illusionist William Ellsworth Robinson (1861-1918), very popular in the United States and Europe, used on stage. Like Stanley, Chen Lian-su exposed spiritualists and even wrote a book about it, published in 1898. The difference lies in Stanley and Robinson's attitude towards their stage persona. In the film, those around him know that Wei Ling Soo is actually Stanley. Robinson was very jealous of his image and never broke character in public for a second. Robinson died in an accident during a bullet-catching trick. "Good God, I've been hit" were his last words and the first that Robinson spoke in English on stage in 19 years.
- In one episode of the film, Stanley and Sophie hide from a downpour in an old observatory. Woody Allen's "Manhattan" (1979) features a similar episode.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
