Barely Known Facts About “The Prestige” Movie

Interesting production notes on The Prestige; the 2006 sci-fi movie directed by Christopher Nolan.

When the initials of the main characters, Alfred Borden and Robert Angier, are taken, the word “abra” appears, as in “abracadabra”, a common word used by magicians.

The word “prestige” means “illusion” from the Latin “praestigium”.

Angier drowning like his wife in a closed box each time and Borden’s twin dying by hanging like his wife Sarah are the characters in the film’s connections with their wives.

In the scene where Borden meets Sarah, Borden shows Sarah’s nephew the bird losing number, and the child cries, saying, “well, where is the bird’s brother? He died”. This quote is an allusion to Borden’s use of his brother in the shifting man and his brother’s death at the end of the film, just like the first bird, and the death of Angier’s clone in every shifting man.

Chung Ling Soo, mentioned in the film, was a stage character created by William Ellsworth Robinson, a white man disguised as a Chinese.

Robinson lived as Chung while in public, as he never spoiled his character. He died in March 1918, when a bullet capture number went wrong. “Oh my god, I’m shot” was both his last words and the first English he spoke on stage.

The birdcage trick that disappeared in his hand in the movie was successfully performed for years by the famous illusionist Harry Blackstone. Nicola Tesla’s machines were on display in the royal hall. At the same time, one of the viewers protested that Tesla’s electric current was unstable. Later in the film, the same man appears as one of Thomas Edison’s associates in Colorado Springs, thereby proving that it is not just magicians hiding amongst the audience of his rivals. Nicola Tesla, a world-renowned inventor, physicist, and engineer. He did electrical experiments in his lab in Colorado Springs for a while, as shown in the movie.

The machine in the novel works a little differently than the movie. It does not copy a person 50-100 meters from where the device is located, as it is, without spoiling their memories and personality. Instead, it carries one’s essence into a newly created body, leaving behind a seemingly dead shell. These dead shells are what Angier calls “prestige materials” in the novel.

Tesla’s assistant calls Nikola Tesla, “the doctor.” However, Tesla received her first doctorate in 1908, a few years after the events depicted in the film took place.

Cobweb-shaped cracks that appear in glass boxes as the characters try to disintegrate indicate that they are made of laminated safety glass. This material is securely held by a thin layer of flexible vinyl woven between two sheets of glass. Laminated safety glass was discovered by accident in 1903 and was patented and used in 1909, just after the film’s timeline.

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IMDB, Prestige