Life of Emile Zola

 

 

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There are 3 great speeches in this movie including the ending eulogy by Cezanne and the rest of the film moves along admirably, the mood is even a bit in the same way, as "Les Miserables", aficionados of that book-stage play, music and/or film, will find a great and similar message in this movie as well.

Yes, this was made in about 1936; expect that and not something from the '80s, '50s or the present. An outstanding movie, somehow, as one who has read a number of Zola books, I think he would be pleased.

In 1936, Paul Muni was on a roll. He had just won an Oscar for best actor in THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR, so it was no surprise that a year later, director William Dieterle chose him for the lead in THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA. Zola, as Muni plays him, is a man who brings to mind a stuffy but morally centered grandfather type who sees his mission in life as the only man who is willing to stand up for what is right and root out corruption and evil when all others turn away claiming one valid excuse after another.
TLEZ is your standard but exceptional Hollywood bio-movie then so popular. Typically, such films begin 'en medias res', thrusting the hero into a series of lesser adventures that prefigure his later, more heroic ones. Zola and Paul Cezanne (Vladimir Sokoloff) are two poverty-stricken friends sharing a dumpy apartment in Paris. Each dreams of using his talent, Cezanne with art, Zola with words, to shake a complacent world with the immediacy of their need to force others to re-evaluate some given bedrock assumptions. Zola is a mudracker, but he cannot find it in himself to lead the fight alone. At critical points in the movie, others step in and out of his life to fire his conscience. Zola and Cezanne meet a streetwalker, Nana, who pours out a tale of economically blighted woe, the result of which is to fire Zola's imagination to write a novel exposing the corruption of a society that allowed such otherwise decent women to go astray. The first half of the movie sets up the character of Zola as one who, when convinced of the rightness of his cause, would boldly put in print inflammatory words that more than once would place him in peril. The second half focuses on the relation that Zola had with Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew who was a captain in the French army. Zola and Dreyfus never met, but their interaction set the stage for some political fireworks that rocked the very core of the French government. Dreyfus was wrongfully accused of spying for the Germans, and a kangaroo court-martial found him guilty of treason and sent him to Devil's Island as punishment. In historical truth, Dreyfus's Jewishness was a significant factor in arousing France's widespread anti-Semitism against him. Director Dieterle sidesteps this controversy by using the word 'Jew' only once, and then briefly in a personal file on Dreyfus. At first, Zola does not care very much for Dreyfus' protestations of innocence. However, when the wife of Dreyfus makes a personal appeal to him for help, he agrees and the movie then turns into a battle between Zola and a corrupt, entrenched French High Command who are collectively willing to see Dreyfus rot on Devil's Island to save their own skins. Zola's 'I Accuse' harangue rings with the sincerity of a man who is willing to take on the Powers That Be to save a country's honor when those very corrupt Powers argue that their own sense of honor requires the opposite. Louis Calhern leads a fine supporting cast as one of the lying officers who see honor only in lying to the French public about their own shortcomings. Joseph Schildkraut as the accused Dreyfus brings considerable dignity to the role of a man who is forced to endure a public and humiliating ritual of dishonoring. By the film's end, the audience can see that virtue and honesty are not enough to ensure the ongoing vitality of a country's nobility. For that, the occasional pecking gadfly is needed. Zola was such a gadfly. THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA serves to remind us that such gadflies are often in short supply, especially when they are most needed.

As a child in the 1930s I thought Paul Muni one of Hollywood's best, but I can't recall the movies on which this judgment was based. I don't know whether I saw this film then or not.

Now I find the depiction of "great writer (Zola) and great painter (Cezanne) in Paris during the 1800s" to be a grade school or Sunday school version of life. Hollywood's description of the Dreyfus affair lacks complexity, sophistication, reality, accuracy. The true story abounds in dramatic interest, excitement, conflict and power quite beyond the movie's reach.

But we do have two marvelous speeches, one when Muni as Emile Zola is reading his pamphlet, "I Accuse," to his friends and allies. And the other, when he is defending himself on a charge of slander in a hostile court. These alone are worth more than the price of admission. Spend your time hearing them again and again and then get yourself a copy of Zola's pamphlet and a good book from Amazon.com on what the Dreyfus affair was all about.

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4.0 out of 5 stars 1937 PRESTIGE PICTURE
An unknown young Parisian writer suddenly becomes famous for penning the sensational NANA. Paul Muni, the great Polish actor who specialized in playing great men of history... Read more

Published on July 31 2001 by scotsladdie

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