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Black Magic (1949) is an historical Orson Welles film noir hypnosis ham and history fest of magical and wildly entertaining crowd and close up, sumptuous set piece dark and magical fun-based frolics of the late forties, with some Dumas-based class projections as the piece adopts the narrative of the novel of the same by Alexander Pere.
For oddity and oddity alone the first scene of this spectacular cast of hundreds of extras spectacular festacular magicianical historical Francophile tale of society ambition and absolute Welles-ian pride of personality leading to a hubris-driven fall, has for no apparent reason other than the whimsie or the dandification of the reels, an entretemps between Dumas Snr played with bold waggery by Berry Kroeger, and Dumas Jnr, played with gentle ungruffery by the normally gruffed up Raymond Burr.
