Summary
Within the velvet hush of a gilded restaurant, Zigo’s violin detonates like a slow fuse: every glissando a narcotic thread, every pizzicato a narcotic needle slipped beneath the skin of Dr. Crampton’s porcelain wife. Her pupils widen into black moons; the bow becomes a pendulum; the bow becomes a scalpel carving consent out of cartilage. An address on a dropped visiting card is all the sorcerer needs to transplant the opera of domination into the antiseptic corridors of the ophthalmologist’s own clinic, where white coats and speculum lamps become props in a backstage séance. Months later the woman—now Mme. Zigo—hovers barefoot across a thicket of upright spears, her soles unbloodied yet her mind flayed open like a vivisected dove, while audiences, momentarily thrilled, toss coins that will be frittered on green-felt tables and absinthe fog. When novelty gutters out, the act is demoted to barns and potato fields, its posters still screaming of levitation and nerveless flesh. It is here, in a dust-choked suburb, that the doctor’s child—eyes the same lapis shade as her mother’s—recognizes the cardboard divinity, dashes across the sawdust, and shouts the only spell stronger than hypnosis: “Mother.” The mesmeric filament snaps; the woman plummets; the husband’s fist delivers mortality to the maestro’s temple. Yet even death must negotiate with obsession: at midnight the violinist’s ghost-in-the-flesh creeps back, fingers itching for the old chord of control, only to clutch not a woman but his own detonating ventricle, collapsing in a heap of coat-tails and swallowed notes. The screen fades on a family portrait recomposed yet forever askew, as if someone has tilted the frame a single degree off true.
Synopsis
Dr. Crampton, a distinguished eye specialist, and his wife were dining in a fashionable restaurant, where a gypsy orchestra was playing under the leadership of Zigo, the famous hypnotic violinist. Facing the diners to acknowledge their applause, the musician's deep-set eyes fell upon the doctor's wife. Struck by her beauty, a desire to possess her overwhelmed him. He stepped down from the platform and playing his violin wildly, moved slowly among the guests, stopping here and there to take the pieces of money they tossed aside for him. Suddenly the woman felt a strange sense of uneasiness stealing over her. She turned and found Zigo at her side. His eyes met hers. With a terror-stricken expression upon her face, she involuntarily threw her arms up before her as if to ward off an unseen foe, then fell back into her chair in fear and trembling. Her husband in alarm sprang to her aid. Turning he beheld Zigo standing at his side. Thinking that the musician was waiting for money the doctor in anger plunged his hand into his pocket, clutched a few coins and threw them on the table, accidentally dropping one of his cards. With an exultant smile Zigo eagerly read the address. The next day as the doctor was about to leave on his professional calls, Zigo walked into his office stating that he feared he was becoming blind. Examining his eyes, the physician dismissed his complaint as trivial, but warned the violinist that his heart was seriously affected. Then leaving instructions to his wife to give the patient a heart stimulant he imparted. He fixed his piercing gaze upon her and in low whispers he commanded her to meet him the following morning. All barriers of resistance broken down, she was lured from her child, her husband and her home to become the creature of this demon's psychic power. Zigo immediately saw that the woman was the instrument through which a fortune might be made. After months of cruel training his victim, while under the hypnotic spell, could, among many other death-defying feats, walk with ease across the tips of sharp-pointed spears and nothing to protect her naked feet. The hypnotist and his subject made their debut in a leading theater, and scored phenomenal success. For a while they enjoyed the public's undivided favor. Keeping the unfortunate woman immured from the world when not under his eye, he spent his spare moments in dissipation and gambling. He lost in large amounts upon the gaming table the money which his victim earned for him. But the public was fickle. In one season the novelty of his performance had worn off and Zigo knocked in vain at doors of the city theaters for engagements. His money gone, he was forced to gain a livelihood by traveling in gypsy fashion from town to town exhibiting in fields and barns. In their travels they reached a suburb of the victim's native city. Her little daughter who, was accompanying Dr. Crampton on his rounds of visits, was left for a moment alone in her father's carriage. Attracted by the lurid posters announcing the appearance of "Mme. Zigo," the little girl with childish curiosity approached them. She instantly recognized the woman of the poster as her mother, and ran to the barn where the performance was taking place. Rushing up to the woman, the child cried, "Mother, please come home with me." But she was oblivious to all that was not Zigo's will. In the meanwhile the doctor, missing his daughter, traced her to the barn. His wife was walking in mid-air across rows of glittering spears. With a cry of rage, he darted through the startled crowd. Zigo attacked him with desperate fury, but the doctor knocked him senseless. This caused the mesmeric power that controlled the woman to snap, and with a piercing shriek she plunged headlong to the ground. Freed from her infamous thralldom, broken in health and spirit, she was restored to her husband and child. Zigo determined to make an attempt to regain mastery over his former victim. In the still hours of the night he stealthily invaded the invalid's retreat. He awakened her. In horror she marshaled all her strength to resist his power. Slowly her consciousness was ebbing away. His conquest was almost complete, when her husband hearing a noise, rushed into the apartment and sprang at the intruder. The hypnotist was about to grapple with him, when shrinking back, he clutched his heart, swayed unsteadily for a second, and fell lifeless at the doctor's feet.
Review Excerpt
"Imagine a film that begins not with a title card but with a tremor—a sub-audible quiver riding the celluloid like a moth trapped between sprockets. The Hypnotic Violinist is that tremor made manifest, a 1914 Danish one-reeler that distills fin-de-siècle anxieties—ocular modernity, female agency, migratory Otherness—into a hallucination barely longer than a cigarette break yet etched deeper than most trilogies dare.
Director August Blom, usually pigeonholed as Denmark’s assembler of polite socie..."
