It's been four years since director Neil Burger's feature film debut, Interview with the Assassin, a compelling pseudo-documentary driven by masterful hand-held cinematography and a gritty, fierce performance by the great Raymond J. Barry. It was a small indie film that promised much.

Burger was obviously in no rush to create his second film, The Illusionist, which opened this year after its premiere at Sundance. The Illusionist couldn't be more of a departure from Assassin. Burger has effortlessly gone from a starkly contemporary small-change profile of a grassy-knoll hitman to a rather stately big-budget epic of a magician living in the autumn of the Habsburg Empire. Even the cinematography is dramatically different, with Burger utilizing early camera techniques (such as iris shots) to give his film the feel of being of another age.

The film is based on the short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist," by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Steven Millhauser. Millhauser has a Poe-ish streak, and his Eisenheim conjures up memories of a number of Poe's tales of the uncanny. The Illusionist follows the events around the arrival of the mysterious magician Eisenheim (Edward Norton) in late-19th-century Vienna. Getting the top of the bill at one of the city's finer theaters, he astonishes Viennese audiences with his magic, and with feats that can in no way be considered mere "tricks."

Using his principal police detective, Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti), the jealous Leopold will have Eisenheim barred from the royal theaters in Vienna. But Eisenheim simply takes his act to the people, taking command of a Bowery stage where he will truly conjure with death.

Along with its bows to Poe, the story also utilizes aspects of the Mayerling scandal, in which Crown Prince Rudolf, the heir to the Habsburg throne, died in what was widely advertised as a suicide pact with his mistress — though much mystery surrounds what actually happened. What is real and what delusion? In The Illusionist only the enigmatic prestidigitator, Eisenheim, knows.

Burger invokes this gaslight world brilliantly, creating sepia-tinged images that at times even seem smudged about the margins, as if developed from plates. His Vienna is composed of bits of Prague here, slices of Tábor and Český Krumlov there, along with a few interior shots of Archduke Ferdinand's Konopiště. Enveloped by a Philip Glass score, The Illusionist is one of the most atmospheric films from Hollywood in some time.

Yet the performances never fill Burger's ornate set. The acting often seems methodical, if not mechanical. The one exception is Giamatti, whose Inspector Uhl is a fully realized character. Childish in his fascination with Eisenheim's craft, he is nonetheless a master of deductive reasoning. Giamatti's wide-eyed joy at seeing oranges materialize onstage is quickly followed by the knitted brows of a sage detective. Though a lackey to the crown prince, he has the will to follow all paths of a crime, no matter how far up into the aristocracy they lead.

Unfortunately, Norton is miscast as Eisenheim. Not only does he seem too rough-edged American for Burger's Victorian tale, he also has no chemistry with the statuesque Biel, making their passionate scenes as believable as coins spilling from ears and rabbits hutched in hats — a bit of a handicap, considering that their undying love propels the story. And Sewell is the type of actor who doesn't have to do much to cause effect, though he does seem to be giving the minimum of his "magic" here.