HANUSSEN
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
As a voice-over intones "Our Father Who art in Heaven....", the camera pans across hundreds of infantrymen in trenches, guns pointed in front of them. Then comes the command "attack!" and the men clamber out of the trenches and start running forward and firing. The next counterpoint scene shows the dead. Ironic and strongly anti-war scene it is in the opening few minutes. It is WW1. Austro-Hungary.
The film, based on a true story, is of a soldier, Karl Schneider, lying on the battlefield, physically and psychologically wounded. Shift to the psychiatrist's office where Schneider describes his dreams as well as an incident from his early childhood when he rescued a young girl from her home which was on fire.
Before the war Schneider had been in vaudeville doing a clairvoyant-hypnotist act. He now decides, with the war over, to try it again. His act consists of reading questions written on paper by members of the audience. He then is able to single out who wrote the message and to reply. This astounds the audience as well it should,
One question, from a young woman whose parents are on a cruise to America is, will she go to America one day, too? Schneider tells the audience that he does not see a ship. He then tells the woman that she will not go to America. Next day's headlines announce the sinking of that ship.
One of the many happenings that make the film so fascinating is the foretelling of the future and the hypnotism with which Schneider is able to get people to do things such as crowing like a rooster, setting fire to a curtain. He himself feels that it is his empathy for the masses that enables him to "see" what is going to happen.
When his fame spreads and reaches into the highest ranks of the Nazis and Hitler becomes aware of him, Hanussen's life is in danger. Meanwhile, inflation and unemployment are causing the masses to be fearful. Schneider predicts the Reichstag fire and Hitler becoming Chancellor.
There are not many light moments but one is of a Baron asking what the price of a certain stock will be. It's 92 now. Schneider, who uses the stage name, Hanussen, because it is more exotic than his own, tells him he doesn't do that kind of foretelling. When the Baron insists, he tells him, I'll give you the number of my grandmother's home. 25. "Is that true?" asks the Baron. "Absolutely. That was my grandmother's address." The next day the stock drops to 25.
Just as Hanussen took advantage of those on stage to make them play the fool, crow like a chicken, so too was Hitler able to manipulate and impose his will on the people.
The film stars that fine actor, Klaus Maria Brandauer.
In German with English subtitles.
Directed by Istvan Szabo
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Ben Hoffman
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