[6]

Jacqueline Bisset (The Deep, Bullitt) stars as the wife of a music journalist who becomes convinced her husband’s body has been inhabited by another man, a famous concert pianist, through the use of dark magic. Alan Alda plays the journalist, whose beautiful hands strike the fancy of the aging pianist, played by Curt Jurgens. Bisset’s character goes through a lot, first noticing odd behavior in her husband, all the way to fearing being in the same room with him. No one believes her when she talks of black magic, of course. Not even as family and friends begin to die around her. So what’s a girl to do? I was little bored for the first two-thirds of The Mephisto Waltz, which feels like it might have been better off at thirty or forty minutes in length instead of nearly two hours. But once Bisset’s character reaches her breaking point and decides to fight fire with fire, the movie becomes more interesting – though the ending is a bit off-putting. Bisset’s not really the best actress for a role requiring so much range. It doesn’t help when the script asks her to quickly and conveniently get over the death of a child. Alda and the rest of the cast have a better grip on the material. Director Paul Wendkos makes the biggest impression during dream scenes and incantations. Jerry Goldsmith’s unusual and unsettling score is possibly the most striking thing about the movie.