 | A terrible loneliness, a melancholy, preys upon the end of magic acts. After all, if we are still there in our seats, in an unchanged theatre, and the magician has gone off, the abiding signs of natural order - of reality returned to - are devastating. That is why in all great magic acts, the magician longs to have something vanish - it could be the volunteer from the audience, or the audience. The rest of the world. Himself! That spirit of change - drastic but delightful - is in the logic of what he does. But if the show goes on, if magic is followed by dancing puppies or a ventriloquist, we feel let down, depleted. It must have been a trick, whereas our hope in magic is for some alteration of order, some intervention by gods or godhood. You know, at heart, that the movies are truly another version of magic when you recognise the emptiness, the feeling of desertion, at the end of every film. Where did they all go? And why can't we go with them? That's why every calm madman or mad woman at the movies always wants the show to go on for ever - it's why we go home with the characters and their places in our heads as material for dreams or daydreams. But that's a second-rate bargain, we know, compared with the chance that we might have been sucked up into the screen. Look at the screen after any show and you know that it is not just hardened white plastic. It is a cunning portal, the entrance to extraordinary kingdoms where everything is lifelike but where the cattle drive of Red River mingles with that of Australia, say, and black-and-white Monty Clift looks across space and grins at Nicole Kidman in colour. Sure, they can get it on - after the end. That is the deal. So "The End", we know, is just code for "The End of the Beginning" - that is how we are free to roam. After all, look at the titles of the particular films. Don't they promise fresh worlds: Great expectations beyond the valley of the dolls? Do you see how eager they are to make sentences, advertisements, poems of further delight? My Favorite Wife - Unfaithfully Yours? There is a balance in this dreaming, a sweet equilibrium in which we never quite fall off the high wire. That's All Folks - Terminé. But wait a while until all the lights go out and all the attendants have gone home. Don't you know the screen comes back to life then? A Star is Born, My Darling Clementine and Tout Va Bien. These pictures form part of a project by the graphic designer Dill Pixels. You can view his collection so far at flickr.com/photos/djll/sets/ Blow-up 1966 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls 1970 A Star is Born 1954 Village of the Damned 1960 House of Wax 1953 Hamlet 1948 Easter Parade 1948 Great Expectations 1946 Dr Strangelove 1964 My Darling Clementine 1946 The Man With the Golden Arm 1955 MGM cartoon 1950s The Maltese Falcon 1941 Warner Bros cartoon 1950s My Fair Lady 1964 My Favorite Wife 1940 Those Magnificent Men ... 1965 Modesty Blaise 1966 Tout Va Bien 1972 Unfaithfully Yours 1948 On the Riviera 1951 Some Like It Hot 1959 (read more)
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