"Obsessive secrecy" is also a fairly accurate description of the Prestige filmmakers' attitude to their adventurous adaptation of Priest's book. The key was, in Priest's words, the "obsessive secrecy" which defined Ching's life, and the "obsessive curiosity" evinced by many of his contemporaries with regard to his execution of the trick both things ultimately forming the core of Angier and Borden's relationship. The fact that Ching himself developed a real-life feud with another magician, Chung Ling Soo (real name William Ellsworth Robinson), must have encouraged Priest, but that was not the key to his intrigue. Set primarily in the late 19th century and very early 1900s, it relates the tale of two fictional stage magicians, Rupert Angier and Alfred Borden, both stars of their day, who develop a feud which rages around their respective executions of a single trick. It was Ching's story that inspired British novelist Christopher Priest to pen The Prestige, the rich source material for Christopher Nolan's latest cinematic puzzler, back in the early '90s. His deception, his maintenance of misdirection, his commitment to this one trick was so fundamental, it affected every waking second of his life. His creaking, shuffling gait was an affectation, maintained obsessively throughout his off-stage life, so as to disguise the reality that, during the show, he's carrying this large, heavy, water-filled receptacle clenched between his legs, concealed masterfully beneath his flowing robe. The fact was that he wasn't as frail as he appeared.
He closely guarded the secret of how he performed this trick, which required no elaborate contraptions no smoke, no mirrors.Ĭhing's secret didn't die with him, though. This frail Chinese magician's speciality was the materialisation of various objects from beneath a simple piece of cloth which he spread upon the stage, his show climaxing with the astonishing unveiling from thin air of a huge goldfish bowl, filled to the brim with water and weighing roughly 80lbs. At the turn of the 20th Century, when the popularity of stage magic was at its peak, one of the most celebrated performers was a prestidigitator named Chee Ling Qua, known on the boards as Ching Ling Foo.
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