by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: William Dieterle
CAST: Paul Muni, Gale Sondergaard, Joseph Schildkraut, Gloria Holden
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 92% Certified Fresh
PLOT: Prolific novelist and muckraker Emile Zola becomes involved in fighting the injustice of the infamous Dreyfus affair.
If you want to get me angry at the movies, you can do one of two things (besides leaving your phone on): Make a really terrible movie that makes me sorry I’ll never get those two hours back…or make a really good movie about some kind of social injustice, where those in power are so empirically wrong that any fool can see it, except those in power. Matewan (1987) comes to mind, as do I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Do the Right Thing (1989). William Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola falls neatly into that category, as well.
I’m tempted to give a play-by-play summary, but that would take too long. In short, novelist and muckraking author Emile Zola is approached by the wife of Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer wrongly convicted of espionage and sentenced to Devil’s Island. Mme. Dreyfus convinces Zola of her husband’s innocence, and Zola pens the famous J’Accuse…! article, an open letter published in the paper accusing the French military of antisemitism (Dreyfus was Jewish) and conspiracy. The last act of the film covers Zola’s trial for libel.
The scenes that really made me angry were the ones where French officers planted, suppressed, or burned incriminating evidence of their own treachery. Outright lies were paraded as fact, and the actual spy was acquitted in a court-martial of his own, just so the French government could continue the façade of Dreyfus’s guilt. When the comeuppance arrives for the parties involved, it is immensely satisfying. No one is drawn and quartered, which is what I would have preferred, but it’s good enough.
While the actor playing Dreyfus himself (Joseph Schildkraut) won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, it seems incredible to me that Paul Muni did not win for Best Actor that same year. It went to Spencer Tracy for Captains Courageous, and I’m sure Tracy’s performance was exceptional, but Muni as Zola is pretty amazing. He ages convincingly with Zola, from starving artist to a well-fed member of respected Parisian society, never less than convincing while playing a man much older than himself for much of the film. The highlight is a late courtroom monologue that runs about six minutes. It’s not exactly subtle screenwriting, but Muni makes the most of it.
The same could be said about the film’s screenplay as a whole. It’s not the kind of story where the two sides have equal validity, so the script doesn’t have to be coy about where its sympathies lie. There may be a few moments that feel like the film is preaching to the choir, but it nevertheless has great power. That might just be me, though, given my proclivity for rooting against social injustice at the movies.
On the whole, The Life of Emile Zola is the tale of a life well-lived, punctuated by an incident that made Zola’s name immortal, and contains one of the best courtroom sequences I’ve ever seen. It’s biography at old Hollywood’s best, not 100% historically accurate (as stated in an opening title card), but capturing the emotional essence of the story in a way no history textbook ever could.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 