Nostradamus

The HISTORICAL MYSTERIES Series thrived on what are actually "urban legends", like the fate of the Dauphin or of Marshal Ney or of John Wilkes Booth or of Napoleon Bonaparte. Carey Wilson, who was the narrator, apparently had a great deal to do with the material used in the series, figuring that the movie audiences enjoyed a bit of arcane romance and twisty history. So it is to him that we are probably indebted to the the successful popularization of the name and career of Michel Nostradamus, as the premier prognosticator of events in history.

Born in France in 1503, his ancestry was Jewish (although he was a Catholic), and he became a physician. But he became famous for a series of poetic writings called "quatrains" which are difficult to translate into English, and which predict (or seem to predict) events of his own century and country's history, and possibly future centuries. His most famous prediction is one that barely anyone would care about today, unless they are into 16th Century French history: he seemed to predict the death of King Henri II of France (in 1559) in a tournament (a lance belonging to the King's opponent shattered when hitting the king's helmet, and part pierced the King's eye entering the brain and killing him). Nostradamus died in 1566. Over the centuries many believe that Nostradamus predicted other events, such as the coming of the French Revolution, the death of King Louis XVI on the guillotine, and the Reign of Terror, and the rise of Napoleon.

Wilson pushed this view down the eager throats of depression America - starving for entertainment and something unusual to take their minds off their problems. In the end Wilson worked on five of these shorts, and kept pushing the envelope. From predicting the history of his own time, and of his nation's history into the early 19th Century, Wilson had Nostradamus predict the rise of Germany, the First World War, the rise of Communist Russia, of Nazism and Fascism, and the rise of Adolf Hitler. In fact one of the series of shorts on Nostradamus dealt with his predictions regarding World War II.

As mentioned before, Wilson helped make Michel Nostradamus the greatest name in paranormal predicting in known history. If you don't believe this, for the number of times that you have heard of Nostradamus (even if you haven't tackled his quatrains) how many of you readers have heard of the English popular Seer, Mother Shipton, who lived (supposedly) in the Tudor period? Maybe the American Edgar Cayce has as big an audience recognition, but Cayce's written works were only published in the last century - Nostradamus goes back to the time of Michaelangelo, Holbein the Younger, and Rabelais.

Unfortunately, Wilson spread much that was false about Nostradamus as well as much that was provably true (like that bit about King Henri II). The predictions about the course of World War II were not true - the Allied command learned that the Nazi leadership was quite superstitious, and decided that a bit of plausible sounding disinformation might help defeat the Germans. So they spread the story that Nostradamus predicted certain grave defeats of the Germans. Now we know these were phony, but the question will remain if Wilson knew they were phony as well but kept spreading them to help the Allied cause.

There has been better scholarship on Nostradamus since the 1930s, and better places to begin to study his intriguing career than in these shorts. But for their time and place they doubtlessly more than served their entertainment value.

Nostradamus (1938)

** (out of 4)

The first short in MGM's series that a look at the early life of Nostradamus as a scientist and how this led to his predictions of the future including the death of King Henry II. If you're interested in some of the predictions of Nostradamus then you should enjoy this short, which is well made and the footage backing the stories is well done.

More About Nostradamus (1941)

*** (out of 4)

MGM short tells some more predictions by Nostradamus. Being this film was released during WW2, a lot of the stories told deal with him predicting the current events. As with others in the series, if you're fascinated by Nostradamus then this short should keep you entertained.

The historical Nostradamus wrote a book of vague poetry, and this short film, self-proclaimed "An Historical Mystery," borrows a mix of liberal interpretations and confirmation bias to present him as a prophet. The deaths of Henry II and Charles I, the London fire of 1666, American Independence and John Paul Jones, the French Revolution and Napoleon, the abdication of Edward VII, the rise of Hitler (although it's too bad they didn't foresee what happened after the annexation of Austria (see the sequel for further predictions ex post facto)), and his own death--he said nothing about any of it, yet hucksters like the bombastic narrator here proclaim him a seer after the fact. The film even presents a vague future prediction of an Oriental attacking everyone in France in 1998. Well, I don't recall any such thing happening 20 years ago now, but I'm sure someone could interpret it as prescient.

I wonder how much of the footage here was cannabalized from other films (as of this posting, IMDb only lists one such case). There are characters talking during the Black Plague nonsense that leads me to wonder whether that's from a prior film, and I'm not sure whether Nostradamus was played by the same actor throughout or not--his appearance certainly changes. Of course, the more recent events are newsreel footage, but I predict that much of the rest is taken from other motion pictures, too.

The second film in this series, "More About Nostradamus" (1941) was nominated for an Oscar, which is the main reason I viewed this first entry, to set up a viewing of its successor.

Next to the Book Of Revelations the prophetic utterances of that 16th century Frenchman Nostradamus have gotten more attention than any others. Maybe even now more than that Mayan calendar which had the world ending in 2012 didn't pan out.

Like so many prophetic seers even the modern ones like Jean Dixon or Edgar Cayce it's all in the interpretation. This film has Michel de Nostradame which is how the French knew him predicting things right up to 1938 when the film came out. Even future American intervention in a second World War which was certainly brewing then.

His fame rested on the patronage of Catherine deMedici the Queen of France who as the widow of Henri II exercised considerable influence of the reign of her three sons who succeeded her one after the other. Nostradamus predicted they'd all come to a bad end and they did. Then again he knew the people he was dealing with, not unlike the political talking heads of today.

It's a nice film, but please take with a mountain of salt.