Psychology of Magic: EARLY FILM

As part of his research into the psychology of magic, Prof Wiseman tracked down the world's earliest film of a magician.

In this article, originally published in The Daily Telegraph (27/07/2005), Prof Wiseman describes his work.


This year sees the centenary of the Magic Circle, one of the oldest and most prestigious magic societies in the world. As part of the celebrations, I will be giving a public talk exploring the relationship between magic and psychology. While preparing for my lecture, I came across an article on the psychology of magic written in 1893 by the French scientist Alfred Binet.

Although Binet is best known for his work on developing the IQ test, he also had a strong interest in magic, and in his 1893 article he describes a ground-breaking study that he had conducted in collaboration with the then famous Parisian photographer Georges Demeny and a highly skilled French magician called Raynaly.

Demeny was a pioneer of "chronophotography" - a forerunner of modern-day cinema that was devised to help to analyse complicated sets of movements by taking several still photographs in rapid succession. Binet described how he asked Raynaly to perform various tricks in front of Demeny's apparatus, and then used the resulting images to scientifically investigate the performer's amazing abilities.

Modern-day psychologists interested in magic had assumed that Binet's images had become lost in the mists of time. However, if magic teaches us anything, it is that assumptions can be dangerous, so I decided to try to discover the fate of Binet's images.

It proved to be a global quest, involving film historians in Los Angeles, Toronto and ultimately Paris. It was there that I discovered that one set of Binet's images did indeed still exist, and was stored at an obscure Parisian film archive. A few weeks ago, I became the first psychologist to look at the images since Binet.

The curator led me into a darkened room lined with magic lanterns and projectors, and then carefully revealed a picture frame containing the 23 amazing images. Each showed Raynaly sitting on a chair in formal evening wear, and each captured a different moment as he placed a ball in his hand and made it disappear.

By obtaining digital copies of the images and animating them, it was possible to create a short film of Raynaly's performance.

Only a few seconds long, the film is the earliest known moving image of a magician - and, unlike most films of entertainers from this period, it is based on images created for scientific research rather than public enjoyment.

Watching the film is a remarkable experience. For a few brief moments, it feels as if you have travelled back in time and are standing shoulder to shoulder with Binet and Demeny, watching the same remarkable performance that they would have witnessed in their laboratory more than 100 years ago.

I will be showing the film in public for the first time during my Magic Circle centenary talk, and it will be interesting to see the reaction. My prediction is that Raynaly's performance will fool a modern-day audience. Why? Because he clearly had a thorough understanding of the psychological principles that underlie good conjuring, especially misdirection.

Even from the few seconds of film it is possible to see how his posture, gaze and hand movements are all perfectly designed to make an audience look in the wrong place at exactly the right time.

Interestingly, the handful of people who have already seen the film have all expressed frustration that the existing photos result in only a few seconds of footage. It seems that the great psychologist Binet also understood the importance of perhaps the most famous piece of advice in showbusiness - always leave them wanting more.

A clip of this early film can be downloaded here or seen in the video below.