Like many films of the era with historical backdrops, Paracelsus recasts a period setting and a cultural icon in a modern form-dressing up the present in the garb of the past to evoke a heroic biography and enlist it in a contemporary mission. G. W. Pabst's wartime production hallows a genius ahead of his times, someone who intuitively relates to elements, nature, and folk, a thinker who questions academic orthodoxy and bookish learning. Paracelsus stood as a forerunner of Faust, a "grand archetypal image" in German cultural history-as well as a surrogate for Hitler. Like other so-called "genius films," the period portrait conveys ideological dogma but also betrays uncertainties and aporias. It affords a case study of a political order's dementia, its vulnerability and paranoia, its fear of ubiquitous threats and invisible adversaries. Paracelsus is not so much a Nazi film of the fantastic as it is a film about Nazi phantasms.-E.R.