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| Emile Zola (Paul Muni) defies French authorities. |
Release Date: Aug. 11, 1937. Running Time: 116 minutes. Screenplay: Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, Norman Reilly Raine. Producer: Henry Blanke. Director: William Dieterle.
THE PLOT:
Emile Zola (Paul Muni) is a struggling Parisian writer who cannot even afford to pay the rent in the drafty attic apartment he shares with artist Paul Cézanne (Vladimir Sokoloff). An encounter with a world-weary prostitute (Erin O'Brien-Moore) inspires him to write Nana, which becomes his first bestseller.
By 1894, Zola and his wife Alexandrine (Gloria Holden) are enjoying a privileged existence. Then Lucie Dreyfus (Gale Sondergaard), the wife of the disgraced Capt. Alfred Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut), comes to Zola. She has evidence which could prove her husband's innocence, but which French military authorities refuse to consider.
Zola publishes an article denouncing the military for condemning a man they know to be innocent. He is well aware that he is setting himself up for a libel prosecution, and is in fact counting on the publicity that will come with the case. What he isn't prepared for, however, is just how heavy a thumb the government has placed on the scales of justice...
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| Zola and his wife (Gloria Holden) bask in their success - but not for long... |
PAUL MUNI AS EMILE ZOLA:
Paul Muni was more or less the Daniel Day-Lewis of his day, known for disappearing chameleon-like into his roles. That was certainly the case here. Muni's physical transformation is startling, a testament to both superb makeup and fine acting. In appearance, he more closely resembles historical photos of the real Zola than he actually does himself. More impressive still is the way Muni plays the overweight middle-aged author. He is not a thin man parading around in a padded suit; he moves the way an aging, overweight man moves, a touch slowly and with a hint of effort that is never overdone, but is just enough to convince completely.
The first thirty minutes of the movie act basically as a prologue, following him as an energetic young idealist. He watches the poorest citizens of the city, and is shocked when they respond to a young woman's suicide by saying that she's better off, which inspires him to write increasingly critical works.
After his rise, he settles into a slothful middle aged torpor. He's very much brought back to life by the Dreyfus Affair, his mental energy restored if not his physical agility. When he addresses the jury at the end of the trial, he shuffles to the podium, an unimpressive aging fat man who doesn't even seem quite able to look people in the eye. Until he speaks, and becomes genuinely spellbinding.
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| Col. Picquart (Henry O'Neill), the one officer who supports the falsely convicted Dreyfus. |
OTHER CHARACTERS:
Alexandrine Zola: It is all but inevitable that other characters are overshadowed by Paul Muni's tour-de-force, and that is certainly true of Gloria Holden's Alexandrine. She receives a few good scenes, such as when she cheers her husband after Cézanne criticizes him. For the most part, however, it falls to her merely to be the adoring and supportive wife, with little else to her character.
Lucie Dreyfus: Gale Sondergaard gets the better female role as the wife of the wrongfully convicted Dreyfus. She is uneasy when her husband is abruptly summoned to High Command. After his arrest, she continues to publicly insist on his innocence. She's the one who presents the evidence to Zola, persuading him to help her husband. When she is called to testify at Zola's trial, the judge refuses to allow her to answer a single question the defense puts to her, leaving her to simply look on the rigged proceedings with bewilderment.
Capt. Alfred Dreyfus: Joseph Schildkraut's Dreyfus is confused by his arrest. When offered a pistol for "the usual alternative," he refuses: I'm not so obliging, nor so stupid, as to provide you with a perfect case." After his conviction, he is left to waste away on Devil's Island; when he returns to Paris at the end of the movie, we see the toll the experience took, as he looks far older than the handful of years that have passed.
Maitre Labori: Donald Crisp is his usual, steady presence as the attorney who defends Zola. He gets little characterization outside of his defense. Still, without ever losing his temper, he is sure to register his displeasure at the court's refusal to allow a fair trial. The intelligence and shere solidity that Crisp always radiates on camera enhances Zola by association.
Colonel Picquart: Henry O'Neill also projects dignity as the one French officer who refuses to simply throw Dreyfus to the wolves. When he is made chief of intelligence, he soon discovers that the letter that convicted Dreyfus was actually the work of another man. The response is immediate; he is ordered to conceal his evidence. "If it is admitted that a mistake has been made, we, the general staff, will be at the mercy of every scandal paper in France!" When it's clear Picquart won't just let it go, he is relieved of his post and eventually himself imprisoned.
Paul Cézanne: Zola's friend and roommate during his impoverished early days. When Zola becomes successful, basking in his riches and reputation, Cézanne (Vladimir Sokoloff) reminds him of his youthful zeal when he announces that he is leaving Paris. "An artist should remain poor," Cézanne declares. "Otherwise his talent, like his stomach, grows fat and stuffy." Later, when Zola initially resists becoming involved in the Dreyfus Affair, he stops and looks at one of his old friend's works, and we can almost hear those words coming back to him as he makes his decision.
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| Capt. Alfred Dreyfus is wrongfully convicted ...and so begins The Dreyfus Affair. |
THOUGHTS:
The Life of Emile Zola is not a technically impressive movie. In terms of camerawork and editing, the film never falls below the level of basic competence; but it never particularly exceeds that level either.
It remains a gripping motion picture, however, because in the areas that form the foundation of any film, it excels. Based on a compelling true story, the movie offers an extremely well-written script and an outstanding central performance.
The script is highly literate (befitting a movie about a writer), with myriad quotable lines. While Zola is certainly the most developed character, good moments are given not only to him but also to both Dreyfuses, Picquart, Cézanne, and the assorted members of the French military command, and the sense of time and place is quite strong.
I'll admit to fearing that The Life of Emile Zola might end up being the kind of dry, "worthy" film that the Oscars love but that are about as entertaining as a badly-taught history class. Happily, with the exception of a labored epilogue, this is not the case. There is an undercurrent of humor throughout. In the early part of the film, Zola and Cézanne help a young prostitute evade the police by having her pose as their dinner companion. In a rainstorm, the impoverished young Zola wrestles with his half-broken umbrella even as he declines an umbrella salesman's pitch: "And lose the privilege of arguing with my old friend?"
There is a touch of satire to the scenes at High Command when the incriminating letter that kicks off the Dreyfus Affair is uncovered. We see the letter shown to one official after another, each of whom declares that someone else must see it - prompting yet another march across the hall to yet another office, with the crowd of gathered officers growing with each new reading. It's all played straight, but it gradually becomes quite funny. The, ah, "investigation" is darkly satiric as well, consisting of the officers leafing through a list of names. Various names are dismissed - "His father was a general" - until they find the lowborn, Jewish Dreyfus and instantly declare, "That's our man!"
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| Capt. Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut), stripped of his rank before imprisonment. |
HISTORICAL WHITEWASHING
The Dreyfus Affair is an infamous historical incident, with Dreyfus's conviction largely recognized as an example of institutionalized anti-Semitism. In this movie, however, it is only mentioned once that Dreyfus is Jewish: In the scene in which the French commanders go through the roster of officers, when "Religion: Jew" is seen written on the page. Written, but not spoken; one could make an aside about how that probably slipped through because censors don't read.
It's not hard to see why the anti-Semitism theme was so downplayed. This move was released in 1937, when the Nazis were at their height and even enjoyed significant support in the United States. It is frankly surprising that MGM made this movie at that time; even with Dreyfus's religion all but ignored, this incident was still in living memory (Dreyfus himself died only two years before the movie's release; his wife was still alive), and a reasonable minority of the public would easily make that association.
The Dreyfus Affair concludes far more tidily in the movie than in real life. In reality, French High Command continued to try to sweep the scandal under the carpet. Dreyfus's conviction was not immediately overturned; instead, he was given a pardon, with a further pardon covering anyone associated with the incident, the guilty as well as the innocent. The conviction was only officially overturned in 1906 - four years after Zola's death - and Dreyfus's military career continued to suffer due to a combination of anti-Semitism and resentment against him for his inconvenient innocence.
For France, The Dreyfus Affair remains the scandal that never quite goes away. As recently as 2017, representatives of far-right Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen resurrected the incident by publicly casting doubt on Dreyfus's innocence. I'm sure this was because a 120-year-old scandal was the most pressing issue of the day, and not because of any blatant anti-Semitic dog whistles.
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| Zola, on trial. |
REMAKES AND RETELLINGS:
The Dreyfus Affair has been retold in multiple film and television projects.
I Accuse! (1958): A passion project for director/star José Ferrer, this told the story of the scandal and cover-up from the point-of-view of Dreyfus himself. I have not seen this version, and as far as I can determine it has not been released on DVD or blu-ray. Contemporary reviews were mixed, with critics largely finding it more worthy than compelling, and it performed poorly at the box office.
Prisoner of Honor (1991): An HBO movie, retelling the Dreyfus Affair from the perspective of Col. Picquart (star/co-producer Richard Dreyfuss). Unlike The Life of Emile Zola, this version does not shy away from the role of anti-Semitism, and Ken Russell's dynamic direction lends this more momentum. However, Richard Dreyfuss took over post-production, and the result sometimes feels like a vanity project. Zola's critical role in the eventual pardon is here reduced to a minor footnote.
J'Accuse! (aka An Officer and a Spy) (2019): Director Roman Polanski's recent take on these events. Reviews were unsurprisingly positive, and it won multiple César Awards (the French Oscars); but Polanski's involvement left international distributors avoiding it like the plague... something doubtless not helped by Polanski becoming the subject of yet more sex abuse allegations around the same time.
OVERALL:
From a cinematic perspective, The Life of Emile Zola is unremarkable, and aspects of the true story have been cleaned up and watered down to make it more comfortable for viewers in 1937. Even so, the story itself is inherently powerful, of an innocent man railroaded for the sake of an institution's reputation. This, coupled with a remarkable performance by Paul Muni, makes this as gripping now as it was at the time.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
Outstanding Production - 1936: The Great Ziegfeld
Outstanding Production - 1938: You Can't Take It with You
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