Writer-director Istvan Szabo and actor Klaus-Maria Brandauer, who previously joined forces on Mephisto and Colonel Redl, reunite in a muddled allegory about an Austrian sergeant in World War I who becomes a magically endowed clairvoyant and hypnotist in Austria and Germany during the rise of Nazism. As in Mephisto, Szabo’s handling of period detail is often sloppy (some scat singing heard at a decadent party is a good two decades ahead of its time) or silly (there’s a rather unconvincing character based on Leni Riefenstahl named Henni Stahl), and the dubbing of some of the secondary roles is clumsy. But Brandauer’s command as a performer and the movie’s incidental glimpses of European high life in the late teens and 20swhich apparently had something to do with this film getting an Oscar nominationmake it intermittently watchable. Erland Josephson, Walter Schmidinger, and Grazyna Szapolowska also star; it was cowritten by Peter Dobai. (JR)