I went into this knowing only that Anthony Quinn plays some kind of magician on a Greek island and that everyone hates the movie. Neither of those things is quite true now that I've seen it, as I quite liked this unusual film. While its constant upturnings of the narrative are often ludicrous, I enjoyed never knowing what would happen next (other than that it would somehow retcon all that came before it) and it seems unfair that this film gets ragged on while the not dissimilar and far less bold
gets lavish (over)praise and a Criterion Collection release. As for Candice Bergen, well, she was still in her period of only being called upon to look pretty (and was probably not yet capable of more if she tried), but it's nowhere near a redux of her atrocious
Sand Pebbles work two years prior-- and it's not like anyone ever in the history of cinema could have done a better job with the role she's given here! Kudos to Signal One for putting this out on Blu-ray and raising its profile-- the film is postmodern enough to have cycled through being embarrassing on first release and arrive back at "interesting" now.