Q:Build a movie plot around this: Who attends the packed performance with dozens of officers? Uhl
A:
In Vienna, Austria-Hungary, 1889, a magician named Eisenheim (Edward Norton) is arrested by Chief Inspector Walter Uhl (Paul Giamatti) of the Vienna Police during a magic show involving necromancy. Later, Uhl explains the story of Eisenheim's life to Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell).Eisenheim was born to a peasant cabinet-maker and became interested in magic after meeting a travelling magician. He also fell in love with Sophie, the Duchess von Teschen (Eleanor Tomlinson), but the two were forbidden to see each other on account of the former being a peasant. They kept meeting secretly but were caught one day and separated by force. Eisenheim proceeded to study magic by travelling the world, and fifteen years later returned to Vienna to perform. During one performance, he encounters the adult Sophie (Jessica Biel) and learns that she is expected to marry the Crown Prince Leopold, who, it is rumored, is brutal towards women and in the past even murdered one. Eisenheim conducts a private show for the Crown Prince and humiliates him in the course of it, in response to which the Crown Prince bans him from performing again in Vienna. Eisenheim asks Sophie to flee with him, but Sophie is afraid that they will be executed. Sophie also reveals that the Crown Prince is planning a coup d'etat against his elderly father, the Emperor Franz Joseph I.At the Mayerling hunting lodge, Sophie tries to end her engagement with Leopold. He reacts by chasing her into the stables with a sword, in full view of the servants. Sophie's body is discovered the next morning in the Vienna Woods. An unknown man is blamed for her assassination and Eisenheim falls into a deep depression. He eventually buys a theatre and begins a new series of magic shows, this time focusing exclusively on the summoning of dead spirits. Leopold secretly attends one of them, during which Eisenheim summons the spirit of Sophie, who says that someone in the theater is her murderer. Leopold, highly unnerved, orders Uhl to arrest Eisenheim for fraud, but...