Edward Norton - On making The Illusionist

05-07-2007 15:49

Edward Norton stars in the romantic drama The Illusionist where he plays Eisenheim, a renowned stage magician in turn of the 20th century Vienna, whose skills must be deployed to their fullest advantage if he is to win the hand of the girl he loves.

Jessica Biel co-stars along with Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell who plays the jealous Crown Prince who will stop at nothing to retain the affection of Eisenheim’s sweetheart for himself.

Norton has been in regular demand since his breakthrough role in Primal Fear in 1994. Since then his credits have included The People Vs Larry Flynt, Rounders, Everyone Says I Love You, American History X, Fight Club, The Score, Red Dragon and 25Th Hour. He recently played King Baldwin in Kingdom Of Heaven and starred in Down In The Valley. As a director he made Keeping The Faith.

What was the appeal of The Illusionist for you

Two friends of mine who wrote the film ROUNDERS had produced [director] Neil Burger’s first, very small indie film. He had come to them with this idea and they were producing it for him also. They brought it to me a couple of years before we made it. Neil’s script at that time was extremely faithful to the short story it was based on. Maybe I have a predilection for thinking I can improve on the classics or something, but Brian and David and I all thought that it didn’t quite work. I think over some conversations we convinced Neil that the basic conceit of the film ought to be that it’s a trick within a trick within a trick. That in the end the Illusionist is affecting his ultimate illusion in the service of his love.

Did you immediately get into the head of this singular character

I don’t really see myself as this guy. I had an idea of him in my head, but I don’t look in the mirror and see that guy. So I thought it would take some work to pull it off, and that was the initial appeal for me.

You have to be especially convincing in the stage magic here, because cinema audiences are used to computer trickery, so they have to believe you’re really doing something fantastical, don’t they?

Part of our thinking on that was to be very, very rigorous in only performing illusions that were being performed at the time. And to be fairly strict, as strict as we could be about performing them live as opposed to using camera trickery or CGI. The only thing that I didn’t do, or that we didn’t use the actual mechanisms that were available at the time, were the spirit manifestations. There’s a great book about the rage for spirit manifestations at the turn of the 20th century, they were apparently really effective and sophisticated, but the techniques they used required a very darkened theatre. So we couldn’t do it and at the same time get it on film. So we cheated those a little bit.

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