Le Guérisseur (1954)
Directed by Yves Ciampi

Film Review

The benefit or otherwise of alternative medicine is a highly contentious issue today but in the 1950s it was one of the hottest topics in France.  For his sixth feature, Le Guérisseur, director Yves Ciampi took his inspiration from a notable cause célèbre, the 1950 trial of Paul Hareng for practicing unrecognised treatments in his hometown in the Jargeau region of France.  This was not the first film in which Ciampi cast a critical gaze over medical ethics in present-day France.  (Before becoming a film director in the mid-1940s, he had himself been a dedicated conventional health practitioner.)   In Un grand patron (1951), the box office hit that made him famous, Ciampi offered a pretty damning critique of the country's entire healthcare system, and his subsequent feature L'Esclave (1953) showed the perils of dependency on hard drugs.  Le Guérisseur is just as hard-hitting and topical, accurately presenting the arguments for and against alternative therapies without taking sides or offering any easy answers to what remains to this day an incredibly difficult moral problem.  The film's topicality is reflected in its impressive audience size - it attracted 1.7 million spectators on its first release in France, a significant achievement for an unapologetically polemical film dealing with such a serious and problematic subject.

Intelligently scripted by Pierre Véry and Jacques-Laurent Bost (the younger brother of the celebrated screenwriter Pierre Bost, frequent collaborator of Jean Aurenche and Claude Autant-Lara), Le Guérisseur makes a compelling case in favour of alternative medicine.  This is most powerfully felt in the stand-out courtroom scene in which the hero Pierre Laurent (a magnificent Jean Marais) argues that traditional medicine tends to treat the human body as a machine consisting of well-delineated components, not a conscious organism with a complex network of interactions between its physical and non-physical (i.e. mental) parts.  Laurent's thesis that medicine should encompass the mind and the spirit - thus engaging the sufferer's will to cure himself through faith - is a persuasive one and chimes with modern theories of holistic and palliative healing.  At the same time, the film does not shy away from the risks of putting too much faith in unorthodox and 'unscientific' medical treatments.  There are no miracle cures and those offer such things are manifestly charlatans who ought to be exposed as such for the public good.  The moral superiority of alternative practitioners like Pierre Laurent over the blatant fraudsters is made apparent in his acceptance of the limits of his therapies - if only the 'legitimate' medical profession exhibited such a degree of humility we might have more faith in it.

Ciampi's meticulous mise-en-scène isn't showy or innovative but it allows the ethical points he has in mind to be conveyed succinctly and convincingly, the film's role presumably being to prompt further debate rather than offer solutions.  In one of his more down-to-earth roles, neither the great romantic nor the swashbuckling hero, Jean Marais has the opportunity to turn in one of his more humane and nuanced character portrayals.  With the help of a well-crafted script, he brings immense moral authority to his portrayal of the titular healer whilst also revealing the niggling self-doubt lurking just beneath the surface.  Laurent's motives may be suspect (he freely admits to having a much more comfortable life since making the transition from conventional to alternative medicine), but he treats his patients with honesty and compassion, never seeking to hoodwink anyone - qualities that appear to be distinctly lacking in his detractors in bona fide medicine, who come across as arrogant, bullying and resolutely close-minded.

Danièle Delorme is no less beguiling as the tragic tumour victim who succumbs both to Marais's magnetic charms and his abilities as a miracle worker - a touching performance that drives home, with a bitter mix of irony and poignancy, the terrible limits of blind faith.  Mirroring Delorme's fate is an equally moving parallel story strand in which a desperate tuberculosis sufferer, played to perfection by a young Maurice Ronet, is driven to reject traditional medicine in favour of a treatment which is bound to fail him.  The willingness of the chronically ill to believe in fraudulent remedies is wryly alluded to in the caption at the end of the film: 'L'on n'a jamais cru tant de choses que depuis que l'on ne croit plus en rien' - a quote from Emmanuel de Las Cases.  'We have never believed so many things since we have stopped believing in anything' - this is a neat résumé of Le Guérisseur's troubling subtext.  The real problem facing medical practitioners today is not the existence of alternative therapies, but the fact that the general public has lost its faith in conventional medicine to the extent that it is now willing to embrace no end of pseudo-scientific quackery.

Film Synopsis

Stricken with a sudden heart attack, Madame Mériadec, a woman in her fifties, is as good as dead until Pierre Laurent shows up at her bedside and applies his unique method of treatment.  Laurent is no fan of conventional medicine and by offering an alternative, consisting of magnetic therapy and hypnotism, he has built up a substantial practice in the Brittany town of Dinan.  Madame Mériadec's prompt recovery can only help to further Laurent's reputation as a miracle healer, and it isn't long before her goddaughter Isabelle Dancey is under his care, receiving treatment for her recurring bouts of migraine.  The young woman's admiration for Laurent soon develops into friendship and then love.  Their marriage plans are suddenly put in jeopardy when, one day, Isabelle overhears her fiancé having a heated conversation with one of his former medical associates, Dr Scheffer.  It is with horror that Isabelle discovers the truth about her saintly husband-to-be.

Originally named Pierre Lachaux, Laurent started out as a practitioner of conventional medicine before he became disillusioned and found he could make more money - and obtain better results - by offering alternative treatments which involved healing the spirit as well as the body.  In cases where conventional methods could be used to support his alternative therapies, Laurent would not hesitate to use these, usually without the patient's knowledge.  Convinced that her fiancé is an out-and-out fraud, Isabelle leaves him and returns to Paris.  Despite his reputation as a miracle worker, Laurent only takes on patients with conditions he has a good chance of curing.  This is bad news for André Turenne, a young man suffering from chronic tuberculosis who has lost his faith in mainstream healthcare.  Believing Laurent is his last hope, André continually appeals to him for help and eventually he wins the unorthodox doctor around.  Laurent knows that unless he agrees to treat the young man he is likely to put his trust in overt charlatans, with fatal results.

Meanwhile, the mushrooming problem of alternative health practitioners across France has galvanised those in the legitimate medical profession to take action.  Laurent is summoned before a criminal court, charged with charlatanism, and gives an impassioned defence of his approach to treating sick people who have been let down by conventional medicine.  His words fail to impress the court, but he is enthusiastically supported by the assembled throng of well-wishers, who regard him as a hero.  Hearing that Isabelle is consulting Michel Boëldieu, another healer whom he knows to be a dangerous quack, Laurent confronts Boëldieu and learns that his fiancée is afflicted with a life-threatening brain tumour.  Isabelle is rushed to hospital in Rennes, but her condition is too far advanced for her to be operated on safely.  To comfort the dying woman, Professor Chataignier allows Laurent to use his methods to treat her, and for a while it seems that he has achieved some success.  In the end the tumour wins out and Laurent's grief drives him to discard his dubious methods in favour of traditional medicine.