Le guérisseur

Having an interest in any or many of the seven arts(eight if you include photography) means embarking on a voyage of discovery. This particular film from Yves Ciampi is a marvellous 'find' not just because it is extremely well made but because Jean Marais, in my opinion, gives one of his finest performances outside of his legendary collaborations with 'mentor' Jean Cocteau.

He plays a former doctor who has turned his back on traditional medicine and makes a great deal of money as a therapy-magnetizer, for want of a better term. He is bitterly opposed by a former colleague, Doctor Scheffer and taken to court for the illegal practice of medicine which has the effect of enhancing rather than harming his reputation. He has meanwhile been treating the migraine attacks of Isabelle, the woman he loves and when she is found to have a life threatening condition he is forced to come to terms with his limitations.............

Pierre Very, a favourite of both Ciampi and Christian-Jaque, has written some powerful scenes involving Marais, the excellent Dieter Borsche as Scheffer and the enchanting Daniele Delorme as Isabelle. Both the trial scene and that of the faith healing session are expertly handled. We also have an impossibly young looking and skinny Maurice Ronet as a tubercular patient. He already displays an incredible sensibility which no actor can be taught.

What makes this piece even more interesting is that Yves Ciampi practised medicine before going back into films after WW11. He also tackled medical themes in 'Grand Patron' with Pierre Fresnay as a renowned surgeon and 'L'Esclave' featuring Daniel Gélin as a drug addicted pianist.

The film also remains topical as there are currently some 400 alternative/complementary therapies listed by the World Health Organisation.

Deciding whether medicine is a science or an art is a question that spans centuries.

Alexander the Great it was who lamented: "I am dying with the help of too many physicians"!

The healers,the quack doctors ,have always been around;on a large scale, you have Rasputin -who had real powers-,on a smaller one ,you have the charlatan (or the healer with certain powers)) on the block or in the village.

Ciampi's movie is a failure:his healer is a former doctor with a medical background at the university ,played by handsome Jean Marais (he should have turned down such a bad part),he is not really an empiric ,ready to get back to science when the "hands" do not work anymore .Thus the debate is altered:hence the travesty of a trial after which the healer is carried in triumph by the crowd.

Actually ,Ciampi's healer is closer to a shrink :nowadays ,there are less healers,because people rush to the shrink's place instead;Jean Marais tells us so: the people he cures are not really ill:they are hypochondriac and he soothes them ;but his motives are dubious:"I gave up medicine because I did not make enough money".His rival,a former colleague ,is nasty,unkind,devoid of human feelings,the screenplay obviously wants to make us side with the ex-physician.

Danielle Delorme provides the love interest as well as a very melodramatic ending ;Maurice Ronet appears as a patient who suffers from TB.

To be successful,the film should have shown a true empiric healer;by not doing so,it fails in its purpose.