skip to main content
The Magus
London, Blazer Films, 1967. Fowles' screenplay for the 1968 film of his second novel, set on a Greek island and involving a young expatriate Englishman who is drawn into the fantastic designs of a self-styled psychic. The film, with Anthony Quinn, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen and Anna Karina, gained a cult following in the Sixties. The cast included two of the best-known male leads of their time (Quinn & Caine), an up-and-coming young actress who had been nominated for a "Most Promising Newcomer" Golden Globe two years earlier (Bergen), and Anna Karina, a staple in the films of French avant garde director Jean-Luc Godard. The director was Guy Green, a former cinematographer, and while the material may have been a bit much for Green, whose previous movies had been more straightforward than the partly fantastic plot that Fowles' novel presented him with, the film was nominated for a British Academy award for cinematography. This script bears the name of David Harcourt and has revision sheets dated September 4, 7 and 12, and November 25, 1967. Harcourt is listed as a camera operator on a production schedule (laid in) dated August 15, 1967. Also laid in is the shooting schedule for November 11. These sheets are torn and sunned, but the script itself is near fine and claspbound in very good red covers. An early piece of writing by Fowles and likely the scarcest item in his bibliography. It is Fowles' only screenplay to have been produced, and we have never heard of another copy turning up. [#021498] SOLD

All books are first printings of first editions or first American editions unless otherwise noted.

See more items by FOWLES, John