Le guérisseur (1953)

Having failed to build a professional life by legal means, Pierre Lachaux (Jean Marais), a former doctor, has taken up magnetism therapy in Dinan, Brittany, out of self-interest, under the name Monsieur Laurent. He enjoys a reputation earned through his therapeutic successes. One day, summoned to the bedside of an elderly woman felled by a heart attack, Laurent saves her, claiming to have done so solely by laying on his hands. The old woman’s goddaughter, Isabelle (Danièle Delorme), a fashion illustrator spending her holidays in Brittany, witnesses part of the scene. At first skeptical, then astonished by this brilliant man, she strikes up a friendship with him and accepts his treatment for her mild migraines. Laurent’s devotion to his patients earns the admiration of this sensitive young woman. Her admiration turns to love, and their engagement is announced. Fiercely challenged by Dr. Jean Scheffer (Dieter Borsche), his former colleague at medical school, Laurent partly admits that his treatment is a sham—he also uses medical techniques—while showing Scheffer his genuine successes with neurotic patients, people neglected by official medicine. Isabelle overhears their conversation and is deeply shocked by Laurent’s words. Disappointed, she leaves him and returns to Paris, bringing their plans to marry to an end. Seeing patients leave their practice, Laurent’s former colleagues become alarmed and refer the matter to the Medical Council. Laurent persists in his work. When he is brought to trial for practicing medicine illegally, his sensational trial—in a courtroom full of supporters and witnesses on his side—only increases his popularity. In response to the Medical Council’s accusation of charlatanism, Laurent says that official medicine treats the body like an engine whose breakdowns it repairs, whereas he treats each patient as a symbiosis of body and mind, and that this is the reason for his therapeutic successes. Nevertheless, the court, following the prosecutor’s demands, convicts him. Absorbed in his work after curing André Turenne (Maurice Ronet), a desperate tuberculosis patient for whom Laurent was the last hope, he is astonished when his assistant (Pierre Mondy) tells him that Isabelle is consulting a charlatan, Michel Boëldieu (Jean Galland). Distraught, Laurent goes to Paris and wins her forgiveness. But on seeing her and questioning Boëldieu, he makes a terrible diagnosis: Isabelle has a brain tumor. He takes her to the hospital in Rennes, but both the doctors and Laurent are powerless: the tumor is too far advanced for surgery to be considered. Still in love with Laurent and credulous, Isabelle begs him to cure her. Professor Chataignier encourages him to try, so that she may have a happy ending, while Scheffer is furious. A miraculous improvement, reported in the press, astonishes the doctors, but it is illusory and the tumor continues to grow. Unable to cure her, Laurent stays by her side until she dies peacefully. After this ordeal, Laurent gives up using his therapy, and Scheffer advises him to return to official medicine.