Steampunk Sourcebook: The Illusionist
The Illusionist poster
Eisenheim in his workshop
Illusions are all about making an audience believe the impossible. Magicians can accomplish this through sleight of hand, misdirection and clever technology. Innovative and deceptive designs makes the turn of the century magician a great trope of steampunkery. At left, Eisenheim (Edward Norton) is seen pondering in his workshop where this son of a cabinet-maker aspires to and achieves greatness.
Most of this romantic drama centers on the relationship of Eisenheim and his childhood love, Sophie, who is being made to marry the crown prince of Austria. The special effects are beautiful and based on magic tricks that were really performed during the 20th century.
Fun Facts and Context:
۞ The film was based on a story that appeared in a volume of short stories called The Barnum Museum (1990). This was in reference to Barnum’s American Museum, an American attraction of oddities popular in the 1840s-1860s.
۞ The tale is called Eisienheim the Illusionist by Steven Millhauser. You can read the full text here.
۞ The romantic intrigue with Jessica Biel‘s character that drives the film is completely absent from the original story. The police become interested in Eisenheim because of the disappearance of a rival magician.
۞ The film is told from the perspective of Walter Uhl (played by Paul Giamatti), a police inspector.
۞ Giamatti spends most of the film flashing back over his investigation for the benefit of Prince Leopold of Austria (played by Rufus Sewel). Leopold was not a real person, but is based on Rudolf, the crown prince of Austria who died at the age of 30 in 1889. Rudolf had a mistress who died under shadowy circumstances like the Sewel character.
۞ The filmmakers wanted to capture to beauty and awe of watching a master illusionist, so many of most impressive tricks are done with computer graphics to achieve what the Eisenheim of the original story had been able to do. But, you can see a video of a real mechanical orange tree illusion here.
۞ Edward Norton did perform many of his own sleight of hand tricks, but his hands were sometimes portrayed by his double, James Freedman.
Sophie (Biel) and Leopold (Sewel) watching Eisenheim
I’ve created a gallery below featuring images both from the turn of the century and contemporary portrayals of Steampunk magicians and illusions.
Of course, I can’t talk about The Illusionist without giving a shout out to The Prestige. I will do another sourcebook entry for The Prestige in particular, but I wanted to know from you, my readers, which movie you prefer. Weigh in below by commenting on this post and make sure to say why you picked the film you did.
PBS’ The Paradise is Chock-full of Victorian Fashion to Inspire Your Steampunk Designs
(Image from http://www.janeaustenfilmclub.blogspot.com)
One place you can always count on for period pieces and beautifully constructed costumes is the Masterpiece Theater on PBS, and The Paradise is no exception. Set in an 1870s shopping Mecca, this series is a veritable parade of inspiration for Steampunk fashion. The hats alone already have my mind whirring! And as the visionary store owner, John Moray says “how can such beautiful women ever have enough beautiful things?”
Before the Victorian era, all clothing was sewed by hand. The industrialization of the garment industry led to a growing collection of “ready-made” dresses, but the upper class ladies were slow to move away from their couture gowns. This is one of the hurtles that the staff of The Paradise must overcome, and fast-thinking shopgirl Denise is able to make the “hard sell” from the very beginning.
“This isn’t a shop. This is a kind of heaven!” cries one of their customers. Keep in mind there was no such thing as Harrod’s or Macy’s in the form we know it today until the 1890s, so the convention of a store that caters specifically to women and their buying power was all but untapped of at this time.
You can see full episodes on PBS’s website by clicking here and scrolling to the bottom of the page for Episode 1.
I Can’t Describe How Excited I Am For Lantern City- Steampunk Inspired TV Series
I was puttering on Pinterest and I found some art by Justin Yun (pictured above). I was curious to find out more and it turns out it was a piece of concept art for a new TV series, Lantern City.
The project was announced in 2012 and is set to premier in 2014. One of the creators, Bruce Boxleitner,has made a short film describing the concept. The most exciting thing about the series to me is the call to Steampunk artists, designers, artisans and enthusiasts to send in submissions and contribute directly to the show.
As a prelude to the television series, the creators have released an illustrated novel called Rise. Check out this video from Chicago’s C2E2 for a concept film about Lantern City followed by the announcement of Rise.
The only downside I can find is that when they described the overall concept, basically an alternate universe where Steampunk is the way of life, was the basis of my own novel-in-progress, Soaring Heights.
Here’s a description of the plot/history from the Lantern City website:
History of Lantern City
“Lantern City is the southern-most city in Hetra, a world parallel to Earth, and is bordered on the south by the Silver Sea and has the largest river in Hetra, the Faudnice River, running through its heart. The city was always known for its commerce, agriculture, innovation, and trade; because of its isolated geography it never developed a real military power. Lantern City was difficult to travel to by land and it had the ability to control who came in and out of its ports.
Eventually, a band of warlords from the outlands of Hetra conquered the surrounding areas leaving Lantern City as their final target. The onslaught of refugees from the other cities gave the citizens of Lantern City ample warning to protect themselves, However almost no one in Lantern City had minds for military strategy or any real combat experience. This was the perfect opportunity for soldier and entrepreneur Isaac Foster Grey to rise to power and “save” the city from the invaders. To secure the city after the battles for Lantern City’s existence, Grey had a wall built around the city and enacted isolationist policies.
Over one hundred years later, the citizens of Lantern City know little about the rest of Hetra.
Since so few citizens know anything about the history of Lantern City or anything about Hetra, a myth has replaced the actual history. Many of the working class citizens and the members of the Underground believe that a peasant named Nolvan inspired thousands to travel as far south as they could and establish a new and free place called Lantern City. It wasn’t until the Grey Empire tricked the populous and took over that the citizens weren’t free.
Many of the working class are waiting for the next Nolvan to arrive and save them from their fates.”
The cast also looks fantastic. I recognized Raphael Sbarge and Tony Amendola from Once Upon a Time, but of course John Rhys-Davies’ face was immediately familiar as well as Mira Furlan from Babylon 5.
Mira Furlan
Raphael Sbarge
John Rhys Davies
Tony Amendola
PBS’ Off Book Takes a Closer Look @ Steampunk
You have to sign in via Facebook or Google to see this amazing video series by PBS, but then you have access to all 45 windows into the media and how it influences our culture. I also really enjoyed their piece on how fandom and fan fiction are a dialog with society.
Steampunk Book Review: Clockwork Angel (Infernal Devices 1)
When I decided to start this blog one of the first things I did was head to my local library. The more I learned about Steampunk, the more I realized I had a lot of reading to do! I picked up a mix of classic sci-fi like H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. but I had also heard good things about Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices trilogy so in I decided to read a mix of the old and the new at the same time.
I’ve only gotten as far as the first book in the series, Clockwork Angel, but I will definitely be reading the trilogy to the end. The Infernal Devices series takes place before Clare’s earlier trilogy (Mortal Instruments) about an angelically infused group of warriors fighting the forces of darkness to keep us “mundanes” out of the crossfire, but it is not meant as a prequel. (Clare stresses on her website that the books can be read in any order.) The story takes place in dreary streets of Victorian London and follows the misadventure of sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray.
The story starts with her imprisonment in the hands of the strange Dark Sisters, who help her unlock her previously unknown supernatural talent. With the help of a deliciously malicious (not to mention handsome) rising Shadowhunter Will, Tessa escapes and finds herself sucked into a race against time to stop a clockwork army in the hands of the mysterious and powerful Magister. You can read and excerpt here. Next on my reading list? The Strange Affair of Spring-heeled Jack (a Burton and Swiborne novel).
Steampunk Sourcebook- The Golden Compass
For die hard fans, His Dark Materials (known as the Golden Compass trilogy in the US), wouldn’t technically fit into the definition of Steampunk.
The series is set in the present/near future so steam power is a thing of the past and the story has nothing to do with Victorian England or an alternate history, but the parallel universe Lyra Belacqua inhabits has some decidedly Steampunk elements to it. The images in this post are all from the 2007 film release of The Golden Compass.
First, England gets “punked.” Lyra lives at Jordan College within Oxford University, which doesn’t exist in our universe. She later travels to an alternative London with dirigibles floating over head and horseless hansom cabs, apparently their answer to the automobile.
The spaces that she inhabits in while in the power of the evil Mrs. Coulter remind me a lot of the work of Alfonse Mucha (1860-1939).
There are also so some fun alternative technologies, for instance, a projector (which they call a spirit projector) that uses glassy orbs to create 3D, moving images of of the mysterious Dust (which is basically powdered sentience). The bad guys also employ “spy flies” which are clockwork insects “with a bad spirit pinned to it” and sent to locate Lyra and her band.
Fun Facts and Context
- The Golden Compass was originally released under the name Northern Lights.
- The trilogy explores contemporary concepts in science such as quantum entanglement (lodestone resonator), dark matter (dust is invisible without the amber spyglass even though in the Golden Compass film they depict it clearly as visible by the naked eye) and human evolution (how did we become “more” than animals? Where did sentience come from?)
- The Golden Compass film stops short of the plot of the first book. The real ending of the Golden Compass is darker and sadder, but I think they stopped where they did in hopes of continuing the trilogy and that needed a more hopeful note.
- Unfortunately, the films of The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass were never made. Many people, including actors in the film, blamed the Catholic church for killing the series. I admit that I watched the movie before I read the books and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t continue and why the church would protest so much. Then I read the books and I totally get it. (Spoiler alert) Even if the story wasn’t overtly about killing god (or at least the one posing as god), there are multiple scenes of a violence against children, like in Citegazze (a city in another alternative universe), that would have been hard to stomach on the silver screen.
For Whom the Gear Turns 