Source: Wild About Harry
For a movie which focuses on a supposed fixation with death, Houdini (1953) misses a bet. A Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh vehicle, the movie presents a rags-to-riches story of the life of Harry Houdini and his wife, Bess, beginning with his start as a performer in a Coney Island carnival, where he meets Bess, through the simple magic circuit, until he begins his famous escape stunts, which gain him fame and fortune.
In the midst of his success, tragedy strikes when his beloved mother passes away, and he stops his tour in order to investigate mediums, attending seances in order to attempt communication with his late mother – all for naught, though.
Finally, he returns to the escape tricks, and Bess threatens to leave him if he attempts the “Torture Cell”, feeling that it is emblematic of a death wish on his part, a death wish that started when his mother died. He promises to discard the trick, but an audience, having seen the advertising for it, demands he attempt it, and he nearly dies in the attempt. Fin.
For me, what made the man was his public persona, because it embodied his impulses, thoughts, even his philosophies, and while his escape tricks are displayed (mostly without the insiders’ view, darn it), the obsession with mediums is only barely touched upon. It could have been so much more, an investigation into the credulousness of the common man, perhaps. After all, it’s reported that Mr. Houdini scorned the common shyster medium as a plague on mankind. But because nothing more than a single seance and some newspaper headlines are deployed, its importance in his life is effectively downplayed.
In the end, though, the missed bet relates to his own real-life death, which was the famous punch to the stomach which supposedly ruptured his appendix (if you’re interested, Wikipedia has a belabored section on his death). Having death thrust upon him makes for an interesting juxtaposition to the death wish he harbored.
If, indeed, he did. Not being a Houdini enthusiast, although I enjoy what I do run across in my readings, I do not know if this is from his life, or merely from the writers’ imagination.
In the end, it’s a movie that explores the Houdinis, and yet doesn’t really seem to show us a great deal, perhaps because this movie feels like it’s more in the tradition of star vehicles than of biopics. I was left wondering as much about Houdini’s motivations as I was about how he performed many of his tricks.
