Skeleton on Horseback

Skeleton on Horseback aka The White Disease is a 1937 Czechoslovak drama film directed by and starring Hugo Haas. It revolves around an infectious disease which breaks out during a war. It is based on the play The White Disease by Karel Čapek.

Cast

Hugo Haas as Dr. Galén
Bedřich Karen as Professor Sigelius
Zdeněk Štěpánek as The Marshal
Václav Vydra as Baron Olaf Krog
František Smolík as Krog's Accountant
Helena Friedlová as Accountant's Wife
Ladislav Boháč as Krog's nephew
Karla Oličová as The Marshal's Daughter Aneta
Jaroslav Průcha as Dr. Martin
Vladimír Šmeral as First Assistant
Vítězslav Boček as Accountant's Son
Eva Svobodová as Accountant's Daughter

Reception

In a contemporary review, the film was reviewed in Variety in 1940, who noted that Čapek's conception "isn't entirely clear, he appears to be taking the dramatic theme that Fascism is a sort of white plague that scourges the people who follow its philosophy." The reviewer noted that Čapek's "thinking is logical he has certainly over-simplified the struggle between war and peace." The review continued that the film contained "many gripping scenes" praising "moments such as the meeting between the doctor and the dictator and the solitary vigil as zero hour for the invasion approaches, while "mob scenes are comparatively inept, and such matters as sound, lighting, photography and so on are inferior."