Austrian movie sheds light on extraordinary blind pianist Maria Theresia Paradis

One of Barbara Albert's many interesting discoveries when she was doing background research for Mademoiselle Paradis, her film about an 18th-century concert pianist who was one of the famous Dr Franz Mesmer's hypnotised patients, was that most female musicians in her time were blind. Maria Theresia Paradis herself had gone blind suddenly at the age of three. Her prodigious musical gifts gave her a position in society and a pension bestowed by the queen of Austria.

"It's sad, but at that time she was more free within her blindness," says Albert. "Because without her blindness and without her gift, she would have to marry – someone brought in by her father, most probably – and then this husband would be like her owner and would probably not let her play in concerts any more, a little bit like what happened to Mozart's sister. It was very typical that only blind women were known as musicians."

Meanwhile, her parents tried one doctor and one monstrous attempt at a cure after another before trying the ministrations of the controversial Dr Mesmer. Unlike his more authoritative colleagues, he didn't cover her head with an acidic compound or jab her eyes with electric shocks; according to Albert's film, he simply placed his hands on her head as she fretted or joined her at the harpsichord when she was playing piano, while spouting a lot of nonsense about an invisible liquid transferring energy around and between their bodies. "But this is always interesting when you work on a period piece," says Albert. "Things seem absurd to us now but, if you look at our world, from outside it is also absurd."

Gradually – so they said – Maria Theresia began to see. She saw colours. She could identify objects. Faces confused her; so did perspective. She began bumping into things because she didn't know how far away they were. And she started to make mistakes on the piano: a good many mistakes. Her father, her promoter and exploiter, was aghast when she stumbled back into the salons of Vienna to resume playing to princesses. "You sound like a dilettante!" he spits with fury. After another altercation her sight disappears again, just as it did when she was a little girl.

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For me, Mademoiselle Paradis is a chance discovery at the estimable San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain; in Australia, it will be showing at the German film festivals in capital cities. It is the kind of film you go to festivals hoping to find: intellectually rigorous, visually exacting, a slice of hitherto unexamined life. Albert was convinced to explore Maria Theresia's story when she read Mesmerised, German writer Alissa Walser's novel about the Paradis case. Unlike other books and films on the subject – "Even Stefan Zweig wrote about this relationship between Mesmer and Paradis" – it didn't cast her as a victim.

"In this, she is a much more ambivalent character. She is sometimes courageous, she looks ugly, she is this too-big child when she is growing up." She felt for her, but also saw a bigger story. "First I wanted to study the development of this character from being an object, having no ego in a way, to being able to say 'I want to do this' and 'I don't' want that'. So it is a story of emancipation and of course, in a way, it is about female history."

Albert was also interested in the formal challenge of using a primarily visual medium to make a film about blindness. "Because making films is about the view, the gaze, while this story is about the act of seeing and being seen," she says. The film opens with a very prolonged close-up of the extraordinary Maria Dragus as Maria Theresia in the throes of performance, her body rocking and her sightless eyes crossed and rolling. Like her parents, the director is putting her on display; like some of the elaborately coiffed patrons, we feel uncomfortable watching her.

"I really love that shot," says Albert. "There were discussions in the editing whether we can really start the film this way but for me it was very, very important. It is a strange thing when you watch people who are blind: they don't know you are watching them and you feel bad about that. I wanted to work with these feelings." Anyway, she didn't want to prettify a woman considered to be plain, even grotesque. That's what her mother does: constantly nagging her to shut her mouth, not to rock, not to look different. "She is very much into her music. I loved that you can feel her in that scene."

At first, Albert met blind actors for the role, but changed her mind. "It didn't work out. I also dared not ask a blind woman to act as if she were a seeing woman – and that's something I needed, because that's what happens in the film. That would have been unfair to ask of her." Maria Dragus, who was so remarkable in Albert's compatriot Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, threw herself into the role, wearing black-out glasses at home to learn her way around a sightless world. Trained in both music and ballet, she was attuned to using her body to perform.

Nobody knows why Maria Theresia went blind. "You can speculate that maybe she was abused – you can say whatever – but for me it was too superficial to put this in because this is not the subject of the film," says Albert. "What I believe is that it could have been this associative disruption, like anorexia. You don't have to be abused sexually; you can be pressured in other ways and then you just don't cooperate any more. You just say no or you close your eyes." Child psychoanalysts she met after screening the film in Toronto confirmed that not only could this happen, but her Maria Theresia was a textbook case. "They said immediately 'OK this is how our patients are'."

Mademoiselle Paradis was not crushed by her dreadful years being treated by quacks. She returned to her rounds of concerts and became a prolific and admired composer in her day, although almost nothing she wrote survives. As she grew older, she was able to carve out a life of her own." But it is of course not a happy ending," says Albert. "I would love her to have everything. I don't like this idea that you have to sacrifice something for your art. 'For the genius, you must be blind'. I think this is a very Catholic idea, that you have to give something to get something back. Anyway, I don't like so much this male idea of the genius."

She hopes others feel the story's relevance to our world. Maria Theresia feared her blindness, worrying that it would make her ugly or just stop her from fitting in. A generation of Facebook likers share those anxieties. Increasingly, Albert sees politicians dictating what shall be seen to be real, much as doctors decided whether Maria Theresia Paradis could see or not. But she recognises she is also making a version of reality; she has taken control. She used to want to change the world with her films. Now she just hopes to help modify the narratives by which we read the world. "The stories we have are the narratives of white men that are a small part of the story of the world," she says. She wants to tell a different story.

It is the kind of film you go to festivals hoping to find: intellectually rigorous, visually exacting, a slice of a hitherto unexamined life

Mademoiselle Paradis is screening at the German Film Festival which runs in Sydney May 22 to June 5, Melbourne May 24 to June 6, Brisbane May 31 to 10 June and Canberra May 23 to June 6

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