The Fabulous Fraud (1948)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Nice entry in John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series. This episode takes a look at the life and death of Dr. Anton Mesmer, the man who helped discovery hypnotism by accident and then took it to the history books. The main focus of this short is to show that Mesmer ended up taking a lot of grief for his discovery and exactly what happened to him during his final years are somewhat of a mystery. If you're looking for a complete and up-to-date documentary on Mesmer then you're certainly not going to find it here but I think fans of the series should at least be entertained with these 9-minutes. I think the best thing going for the film is its rather dark atmosphere created by Edward L. Cahn. While watching the film you also feel as if you're watching a Universal horror film from this era due to all the thick fog, which just helps with the atmosphere. The performances are also quite good and as you'd expect the narration from Nesbitt is top-notch.
