Nonetheless, that doesn't detract from our understanding of how skillfully Houdini was able to hold his audience spellbound. Although Houdini's audience may have suspended disbelief, Houdini is insistent that he does not perform actual magic - it's all just trickery. The film follows Weiss/Houdini from his birth in Budapest, to his relocation with parents and brothers to the United States, where his father became the rabbi of a Jewish congregation in Wisconsin but was essentially fired, according to the film, because he couldn't speak English.Īlready fascinated by magic to the point of obsession, young Erich (Louis Mertens) begins performing rudimentary tricks on street corners and earning money from passersby, which he brings home to his adored mother (Eszter Ónodi, "Valami America").įrom the outset, "Houdini" takes pains to explain how every illusion and escape works. 1 and 2, with Adrien Brody ("The Pianist") in the title role. But he lives again in a two-night, four-hour biopic on the History Channel, airing Sept. Harry Houdini escaped death time and time again, only to die of peritonitis and a ruptured appendix at 52 in 1926. Perhaps the greatest stunt Erich Weiss ever pulled off was that nearly 90 years after his death, his stage name, Houdini, is still the virtual definition for "the greatest escape artist of all time."
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