A warning against the ideological mind: Karel Čapek, The White Plague  (1937)


This film from 1937 ( !!) is uncannily topical in the current times of the coronavirus pandemic.
Čapek was a prophet! Well, judge for yourselves: In the overall situation of populist
authoritarianism rising, a pandemic spreads from China, killing people over fifty years of age...
We all know what happened a couple of years later... Let us discuss...


The White Plague can be construed as an openly political play in which Karel Čapek warns against
the danger of impending Nazi totalitarianism. The plot is simple: people who have reached
middle-age and are most likely in positions of power and influence become victims to a pandemic of
an infectious disease: an incurable white plague.  In a war-mongering dictatorship very much like
Nazi Germany, a heroic doctor, Dr. Galén, discovers a cure for the disease, but he refuses to  make
it generally available unless the country's dictator and its military-industrial complex abandon
their militarism and pledge themselves to eternal peace. This allows the author to examine  several
complex ethical dilemmas.

The film is based on a Karel Čapek play of the same name: