Following the success of Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale conjured up The Prestige. Hugh Jackman shares the screen in this Victorian-era thriller about rival magicians playing dirty tricks on each other. Its "slippery" nuances delighted most critics, although on its grand unveiling, paying punters were mostly drawn to the mind-bending antics of Borat.

Now You See Me...

Nolan presents himself as the grand illusionist in The Director's Notebook, comparing the construction of a mystery thriller to the art of misdirection. It's a brief introduction to a batch of other behind-the-scenes featurettes that take apart the building blocks of the film.

Conjuring The Past looks at how the design team created the illusion of 19th Century London on the backlot of Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Visual Maze sees how Nolan encouraged a sense of intimacy and immediacy with the characters by shooting them with hand-held cameras at eye-level. Inevitably though, this was disorientating for the actors. In the whirl of activity Michael Caine admits to being worried about forgetting his lines, but Bale insists, "It's a messy way of filming and I like that mess."

Four photo galleries include more snippets of behind-the-scenes action.

The Old Switcheroo

You may have noticed the image of a bird in a cage recurring throughout the film. Nolan briefly touches on the thinking behind that as well as chatting about other subtextual elements in Metaphors Of Deception. Chipping in on this discussion are Nolan's brother (and co-writer) Jonathan Nolan along with novelist Christopher Priest. And in another featurette on real-life inventor Nikola Tesla, Priest justifies the idea of the 'transporter' box. It's an essential plot device and an annoying contrivance for some critics, but Priest reckons this was "fair game" as Tesla supposedly built many inventions "which he then buried into secrecy". Apparently he was just very bad at keeping secrets...

In the final featurette Resonances, Nolan expresses his hope that The Prestige will get people thinking more deeply about the mechanics of storytelling. But since he doesn't provide commentary for the main feature, anyone wondering about the technical jiggery pokery that goes into making a film will be disappointed. Even so, fans of Nolan and Bale wouldn't want to miss this particular trick.

EXTRA FEATURES

The Prestige DVD is released on Monday 12th March 2007.