Nostradamus

Last week thousands of war-worried U.S. citizens strolled from their neighborhood cinemas with a lighter step. These heartened cinemagoers had seen a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer short subject, More About Nostradamus, now playing in some 200 U.S. cinema houses. According to the fabled Renaissance Prophet Nostradamus, Hitler would be licked and everything was going to come out all right.

More About Nostradamus opens with the violation of the tomb of Astrologer Michel de Notredame, court physician to France's King Charles IX. All sequences of the short are narrated while a silent cast plays the scenes. They proceed to tell the story of Nostradamus' life. He was born in 1503 at Saint-Remy, Provence. A devout French Catholic of Jewish descent, he won distinction for his medical labors during France's plague. In 1555 he published his Centuries, written to foretell the future.

From this juncture the camera frequently scans pages from the Centuries. Most favored prophecy: "The young lion will conquer the old one upon the field in a single combat. He will pierce his eye in a golden cage, who will then die a dreadful death." This meant nothing until Henry II died after a joust with the Count of Montgomery. A lance penetrated his golden visor, pierced his eye. That established Nostradamus as a prophet.

For four centuries thereafter, kings and commoners, scholars and clairvoyants have sought to decipher the vague, abstruse wording of the Centuries. Its antique, cloudy verse presages fires, floods, pestilence, monsters, wars to come, but usually at unspecified times. Much could be done with it, and much has been.

With the assistance of dubbed-in shots of battle scenes, war planes, sea fights, etc., M.G.M.'s narrator offers an assortment of Nostradamus' predictions about the present war. One reads: "In Germany a new sect shall be born which shall renew ancient pagan times. Roman power shall be completely abased, a great neighbor imitates his footsteps." That supposedly forecasts the rise of Hitler and Mussolini.

World War II, Dunkirk, the capitulation of the Belgians--all, according to More About Nostradamus, were foretold. But the quatrain which heartened last week's cinemagoers most was the final one: "At last the two leaders shall be disjointed by the hunt, by a humane rule of Anglican breed, the daughter of the English Isles shall re-establish unity, justice, shall lock war within its bars." Interpretation: The U.S. will win World War II.

Two things about the Centuries are undeniably true: i) new generations have constantly dusted off its well-worn prophecies to fit newborn events; 2) a reappraisal of its tempting quatrains is a sure sign of world crisis. Last time they got a good dusting was during World War I. Germans used Nostradamus to prove that they were sure to win; the French foresaw an Allied victory. But if Nostradamus foresaw that his shade would become a U.S. cinema star in World War II, he apparently forgot to mention it.

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