Paracelsus (1943)
Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst

Film Review

Paracelsus was the second film that G.W. Pabst made on his return to Germany after an extended sojourn in France in the 1930s. It follows Komödianten (1941), a film portraying the development of German theatre in the 18th century. Both films were made with the full support of the Nazi regime and were blatant propaganda pieces.  Along with several other period films made in Germany around this time, these sought to glorify the Third Reich by celebrating the country's cultural achievements of past centuries.  Because of its privileged status, Paracelsus was given a colossal budget but proved to be a monumental flop.  It was filmed at the Barrandov studios in occupied Prague from July to November in 1942, and had its Berlin premiere in the spring of the following year.

Paracelsus was intended to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the death of the 16th century Swiss physician Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (a.k.a. Paracelsus), whose methods (based on observation and experience, rather than slavish adherence to ancient texts going back to Aristotle and Galen) were radical for their time and came to form the basis of modern medicine. Now considered the father of toxicology, Paracelsus was a truly original thinker who was way ahead of his time in many fields of medical theory and practice.  The film begins in the mid-1520s, with Paracelsus comfortably settled in the Swiss town of Basel.  His methods of treatment may be unfamiliar but they prove effective and Paracelsus soon becomes popular among the townsfolk.  He is regarded with contempt and suspicion by the town's conventional physicians, who adhere to methods that have been practised for hundreds of years.  How can they take seriously a so-called healer who insists upon delivering his lectures in German instead of Latin?

When Paracelsus intervenes to prevent the rich printer Froben from having his leg amputated unnecessarily he merely makes himself another powerful enemy.  To prevent an outbreak of plague, Paracelsus orders that no goods or people should be admitted to the town.  This infuriates the merchant Pfefferkorn, whose livelihood is threatened.  Paracelsus acquires a faithful assistant in the young Johannes, who is keen to follow his example and become a great physician.  Johannes is in love with Pfefferkorn's daughter Renata and he sees his chance to gain her favour when Froben falls gravely ill.   Without his master's knowledge, Johannes takes the elixir that he has been working on for many years and administers it to Froben, expecting it to restore him to health.  In fact, the potion proves fatal and this provides Paracelsus's enemies with the ammunition they need to destroy his reputation and drive him from the town.

In Pabst's film, the connection between Paracelsus, a great man of science, and the leader of the Third Reich is firmly established, and those scenes in which Paracelsus rants (with an unmistakable note of fanaticism) about his vision for mankind are chillingly evocative of Hitler's forcefully delivered speeches. Paracelsus promises a future in which Man will rise above Nature and ultimately conquer death itself - the Nazi dream of a world united under the swastika to form the greatest civilisation in history was no less deliriously Utopian.  The film's authors clearly had no qualms over distorting historical fact to meet their propaganda objectives.  In his time, Paracelsus was an anti-authority outsider who dabbled as much in discredited sciences such as alchemy and astrology as he did 'respectable' sciences like medicine.  He devoted much of his career to a futile quest for the Elixir of Life, which is how he came to be the inspiration for Goethe's Faust.  The Paracelsus that Pabst presents us with is no wild eccentric or sinister occultist but a heroic visionary, a man of divine wisdom who will guide humanity from the darkness of ignorance and superstition into the light of understanding and unity.  In other words, a man like Herr Hitler.

And of course there was only one actor on the planet suitable to play this giant amongst men - Werner Krauss.  Possibly the greatest actor Germany has ever produced, Krauss is best known today for his leading role in Robert Wiene's expressionistic fantasy The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).  Fine actor though he was, Krauss was also a notorious anti-Semite and Nazi supporter - his portrayal of a Jew in the infamous propaganda film Jud Süß (1940) fanned the flames of anti-Semitism and helped to make the Holocaust possible.  For Hitler, Krauss was Nazi Germany's cultural ambassador, and so it was fitting that he should play Paracelsus, and in a way that makes him appear to be the very embodiment of Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Superman.  Tragically/deservedly (delete as you see fit) this was to be one of Krauss's last screen roles - after the war he became persona non grata and passed his remaining days in comparative obscurity. Pabst avoided the same fate and redeemed himself with his forceful denunciation of Nazism once the Third Reich had crumbled.

Paracelsus is fascinating both as a piece of Nazi propaganda and as a lovingly crafted biopic in its own right.  It is a polished period piece (the grandest of Pabst's sound films) that can hardly fail to impress with its authentically created sets (interiors and exteriors), which show an extraordinary attention to detail and give the film a distinctive, very disquieting mood.  The grimly oppressive atmosphere of the piece is similar to that of Carl Dreyer's Day of Wrath (coincidentally made the same year, in Nazi occupied Denmark), and strongly evokes the hysteria of the age in which it is set - the fear of plague in Pabst's film as palpably felt as the fear of witchcraft in Dreyer's film.  There are no prizes for guessing what this fear is meant to represent in Jew-hating Nazi Germany.

This is a film that deserves to be more widely appreciated than it presently is.  The propaganda subtext is a little too visible in some places but the sheer dramatic power of Werner Krauss's performance makes even this pardonable.  Most memorable is the scene that comes near the middle of the film, where a gypsy juggler (played by a supremely creepy Harald Kreutzberg) performs a strange dance of death and the town people follow him, moving about like an army of defective automata.  It is the spookiest visualisation of an outbreak of plague you can imagine.  At the end of this remarkable ballet of death, there is the ominous sound of a blade being sharpened and then the image of the Grim Reaper flashes before Paracelsus, equipped with his trademark scythe and fetching skull-like head.  It's more John Carpenter than G.W. Pabst - and you almost leap out your seat when you see it.  Has cinema given us a more striking representation of Nazi paranoia than this?  It is not the greatness of Hitler's regime that Pabst's film evokes, but rather its sublime insanity.