Duncan Ely (Curt Jurgens), a renowned concert pianist, befriends failed musician Myles Clarkson (Alan Alda). While Clarkson bathes in the attention, the ailing Duncan and his daughter (Barbara Parkins) carry out a ritual that allows Duncan to possess Myles’s body when he dies. Afterward, Myles’s wife, Paula (Jacqueline Bisset), begins to notice changes in her husband.
While no doubt made due to the success of Rosemary’s Baby, The Mephisto Waltz owes more to a decade of witchcraft pictures, none of which required their script writers to know more about the Bible than that it is a book.
In a slow, somber way, The Mephisto Waltz is effective. It isn’t frightening, but does create an air of paranoia. The focus is on Bisset’s Paula, and how she deals with the mysterious events around her. During the too-long opening, it is hard to sympathize with her as she is suspicious of Duncan before there is reason. This has less to do with the story or the characters than a desire of the filmmakers to separate the classes. The rich are strange and not to be trusted. However, once her husband is replaced, the film works much better, following her as she tries to find a way out of a hopeless situation. And what she finds makes some of the slower moments worthwhile. There are no crosses or faith to save the day and her obsession rings true to anyone who has lost a loved one. This one gets points for avoiding the traditional climax.
The Mephisto Waltz does make it too easy to impersonate someone. Since the witches study Myles, it’s reasonable to assume that magic doesn’t help with unknown memories or behaviors. This becomes obvious when Duncan-Myles does not know a cute husband-wife phrase the two used to use. If that’s the case, the masquerade should be tripped up on discussions of family members and past events. We just have to hope that Myles didn’t use any combination locks. Such memory losses wouldn’t necessarily imply witchcraft, but I’d expect to see Myles under psychiatric care when it’s found he only has a cursory knowledge of his own life.
Certainly a flawed film (I could do without ever seeing another psychedelic, fisheye lens, dream sequence), Jurgens, Parkins, and Bisset, along with a non-standard ending, make this worth a rental.