Blu-ray, DVD Release: Paracelsus

By
Laurence
– July 8, 2020Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Available now
Price: DVD $13.99, Blu-ray $19.99
Studio: Kino Lorber

A  little bit of shadowy history first:  Paracelsus (1493-1541)–a physician, alchemist and spiritual guru–was one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of science.

And, like its subject, this 1943 biographical drama Paracelsus is shrouded in mystery, even though it was  directed by one of the supreme stylists of the German cinema: G.W. Pabst (The Love of Jeanne Ney, Westfront).

Werner Krauss (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) stars as the Swiss-born scientist, who faces the seemingly impossible task of protecting the German people from a coming plague, and calming a rising tide of mass hysteria. Despite being called “a remarkably interesting film” by The New York Times’s Vincent Canby (when it received its belated U.S. premiere in 1974), Paracelsus continues to be overlooked, along with most all of the films made in Germany during World War II. Today, it’s apparent that Paracelsus is not a propaganda film, but the work of an oppressed artist attempting to convey a humanist, possibly subersive message under the gaze of Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray and DVD contain a audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan.

Buy or Rent Paracelsus

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.