Title: Life of Emile Zola
Year: 1937
Director: William Dietrie
Country: US
Language: English
The Life of Emile Zola won the coveted Best Picture Oscar in 1937 and...nobody talks about it anymore. It is a pretty difficult film to find as it isn't on any streaming service and the dvd version is out of print. I gave up trying to pay for a copy & found the entire version on Youtube. I didn't expect much from this film, but I was quite surprised.
A fictionalized account of the life of famed French author Emile Zola, the majority of the picture deals with his involvement in the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus who was falsely convicted of giving secret military information to the Germans and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devils Island.
Although the dialogue can be a bit pedantic, the screenplay of Emile Zola is brilliant in the way it tells two compelling stories (Zola's Life & The Dreyfuss affair) and eventually weaves them together to create a compelling climax. The courtroom scene near the end of the film is Cinema at its best.
The costuming, lighting, editing, cinematography are all excellent, but the main standouts are the performances of Paul Muni (Zola) and Gale Sondergaarde (Dreyfus). When Gale screams that he is innocent we are fully invested in the character and our heart pains to see the character in such trouble.
Apart from a brief shot of a jounral entry (Religion: Jew?) it's unfortunate that the film couldn't explore the anti-semetic side of the Dreyfus Affair. Life of Emile Zola is mportant and entertaining; I can certainly see why it won Best Picture.
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