Part of the 31st Cambridge Film Festival’s retrospective on the Dutch film director Jos Stelling, THE ILLUSIONIST (1984) sets the spectator straight away into an oneiric world in pure Fellinian vein. The life of a Dutch family of five, where between grand-father, mother and father and their two sons there appears to be a fight to gain the ‘Crown of the Eccentric’, is captured in its most bizarre aspects. The film is constructed around ingeniously designed vignettes of absurdities that are mimed throughout; the colourful features of the settings, the humorous situations and the comical performances successfully entertain the spectator through a journey into this dysfunctional family, especially into the two brothers’ battles of (un-) consciousness.

Distinctively two and yet seemingly one, the two brothers incarnate the poles of death-wish and ‘pure’ enjoyment. Set in this conflict, as time goes by the brothers’ gags take on an increasingly darker undertone, beginning to evoke the Cain and Abel myth; intermingled with the brothers’ narrative are the illusionist shows of a magician and his assistant in a suggestive vaudeville style. The interaction between the family’s ‘illusionist adventures’ and the magician’s show inscribes the film within the atmospheres of the concert saloon, freak shows, and theatre burlesque. Clearly embedded in a very Dutch scheme of humour and traditions, this mix of Marx Brothers’, Fellini’s, Dali and Bunuel’s visions, Stelling’s creation of wonders will certainly keep the audience’s curiosity alive.