A Vida de Emile Zola

Such occasions are not unlike great arias in operas: the stage lights softly dim and follow spot brightens as all cast characters (and audience) lean forward to focus on the delivery.

Such a moment occurs in "The Life of Emile Zola" as Paul Muni as Zola steps to the platform to deliver his courtroom defense speech. Against all the odds of a jeering mob and negative press, he proceeds to offer a seven minute oration.

The scene is a set-up for Muni, and the camera, editing, and staging are all designed for the actor to deliver his thespian goods. He doesn't disappoint.

Two other cinematic courtroom speeches are comparable: Alec Guiness as Benjamin Disraeli in "The Mudlark" (1950) enjoyed the rare opportunity of having his six minute, uninterrupted speech done in a single, slow tracking shot; and Gary Cooper as Howard Roark in "The Fountainhead" (1949) held a courtroom breathless for over five minutes, defending his act of poetic, if not Randian-judicial, justice.

In Muni's case, his defense scene turned out to be a highpoint of an intriguing acting career. From Yiddish theater to worldwide stardom--with fewer that two dozen films to his credit--Muni constantly enthralled some while leaving others doubtful.

What's undeniable about Muni is that he achieved stardom on his own power. He was able to convince a goodly number of people, both peers and public alike, that he was indeed not just a good but great actor.

While some held a sneaking suspicion that he was a wee bit of a poseur, having never formally studied his craft, it really doesn't matter. Muni didn't win his lucrative acting contracts--or his Academy Award honors--for nothing.

Personally, I enjoy his general work, being more partial to roles more close to his own than those of his elders. In latter cases I felt he often tended to go a bit over-the-top with "stereotypical mannerisms."

As Zola, though, his earnestness and determination proves convincing, and the film itself is peopled with a powerhouse cadre of Warner Bros. character players.

To the film's credit, a pre-enactment inscription admits to the intermingling of fiction with fact for dramatic purposes. This also relieves the production of accusations of historical inaccuracy.

All in all, "The Life of Emile Zola" is a most engrossing biopic of a courageous literary giant who placed the pursuit of justice above the receiving of worldly accolades.

In 1937, The Life of Emile Zola was nominated for the largest number of awards, ten. The movie won three including Best Picture. However, sadly and in some ways shamefully, this film has been ridiculed for being dated today, it's ways and means a little obsolete, and it's style rather unusual. That is downright unjust! The style which is portrayed in this remarkable seventy year old film is quite conventional. The dialogue is perhaps overwritten, but the powerful story is there, and the story line is enhanced by intelligent dialogue to say the least, as well as, first rate performances by an excellent cast, preferably Paul Muni (giving possibly his best performance) as Emile Zola and supported well by Joseph Schildkraut as Dreyfus. Not to mention, the film is technically excellent. Editing, costuming, lighting - without doubt, and all the production values stand up beautifully even several decades later.

Sure it's a fictionalized version of the life of the great French writer Emile Zola, however, great fiction can make a great film and that is the case with The Life of Emile Zola. One may forget that this film was released in 1937 when anti-Semitism was again sweeping the continent of Europe, and for that very reason, the word "Jew" is never mentioned and we are only given a short visual reference. To avoid lawsuits from their descendants, only Major Dort and Major Esterhazy names were specifically identified. Others are referred to as the Chief of Staff, the Minister of War, etc. Also, Dreyfus was not freed and restored to rank in 1902, the year of Zola's death, but in 1906 after being found guilty again in an 1899 retrial. These historical errors can be forgiven, because it's the films message which stands and given the current climate, the movie's message is all the more important.

The shifting focus of this film doesn't make it a frustrating experience for modern viewers. In fact, the film flows quite nicely: struggling writer, gets in trouble for his book, then the film follows Zola's success as he becomes a powerful force in society. Eventually we get to 1894, where many claim the film to zoom away from its subject, where the film begins to focus on Dreyfus. With that being said, if you sit down to watch The Life of Emile Zola, don't skip the first third of the movie, because it's every bit as moving and powerful as the dramatic court scene, most notably in the unforgettable self-defense scene in which Muni delivers an outstanding performance.

Unfortunately, had Muni not won the previous year for another biopic, The Story of Louis Pasteur, he would have received the Oscar for his portrayal of Zola. Muni was not only nominated for an Oscar for this role but also received awards from many critics groups. Today many dismiss the significant talent of Muni (one of films first devoted actors), however, one cannot deny he had a great deal with elevating the art of film acting.

... and I've seen a lot of them, in particular the precodes.

Warner Brothers did make heavy use of Paul Muni in the 1930s, particularly in their prestige pictures, capitalizing on his ability to completely physically transform into a role, and he uses that talent here, where he plays Emil Zola. The odd casting includes two actors well known as portraying villains - Joseph Schildkraut and Gale Sondergaard - as Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the wrongly accused and convicted member of the French army and his faithful wife, trying to find somebody who will help him, even after he is shipped out to Devil's Island. They are the only two completely likeable characters in the film, with the images of other treacherous characters they had portrayed somehow erased by their performances.

Even Zola is not likeable through the entirety of the film. He starts out likeable, shown in his youth, looking for, finding, and writing about topics on injustice, but then he grows complacent as he ages, to the point that when Mrs. Dreyfus comes to him for help when he is late in life at first he resists her plea. But her case is compelling and he quickly changes his mind.

The other thing I noticed in this film - It sure is good to be an American and have protections for free speech. Throughout his career Zola comes up against state censors who try to suppress his writings if they make France look bad. Then whenZola takes up Dreyfus' case he is prosecuted for "criminal libel" which is basically a law against making France look bad, with even the judge in the matter seeming to be in cahoots. No wonder the officers involved felt free to keep Dreyfus imprisoned even after they found out who the actual spy was.

I'd recommend this film as a worthwhile watch, but I'm not sure it was the best film of 1937. I'd probably give that honor to The Awful Truth.

Handsomely mounted in the Warner Brothers style of the 30's, and topped off with a stirring Max Steiner score, "The Life of Emile Zola" (***) remains a passionately engrossing experience. Refreshingly, the film admits upfront right after the opening titles that it's a fictionalization, something that isn't done nearly as often it should be in today's purportedly "true story" docudramas. (These days, this disclaimer is often buried in the fine print at the very end of the credits after nearly everyone has left the theater.) Even so, "Zola" remains remarkably true to the facts. It skips lightly over the author's early years in the first 20 minutes and then soars to gripping dramatic heights in the outrageous libel trial that Zola underwent after he published his celebrated "J'Accuse" which condemned the hypocrisy and corruption of the military establishment as it falsely accused high-ranking Captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason and then attempted a massive cover-up when it realized it had made a mistake. The movie has been criticized for underplaying the anti-semitic aspects of the Dreyfus prosecution, but it's implied quite neatly in the scene where the camera pans down Dreyfus's resume to his religion while one of his superiors marvels how "someone like that" could became an officer. The film does indulge in some pretty fancy compression towards the end. It implies that Dreyfus was reinstated in the Army right after returning from Devil's Island and on the same day as Zola's tragic accidental death. However, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the real facts are even more disturbing and incredible. In 1899 after his return, Dreyfus was retried and found guilty again by a court tribunal! However, he was pardoned by the President. He was finally cleared of all charges and reinstated in the service in 1906, four years after Zola's death in 1902. Interesting sidelight: Zola and his devoted wife had no children but he did carry on a 14-year affair with one of his housemaids that produced 2 children. I guess there's no way the Warner Brothers were going to complicate the image of their hero as a saintly crusader for truth and justice by including this spicy little domestic tidbit.

This well-crafted film is a worthwhile memorial to Émile Zola, one of the finest writers of his era, and one who deserves to be better-known today outside of his own country. It seems likely that Zola, a naturalistic writer who always used lifelike, genuine characters who had both strengths and weaknesses, would probably have been satisfied with the way he is portrayed by Paul Muni and by the screenplay. Zola is shown not as a flawless hero or as a larger-than-life icon, but as a real person with a talent for writing, who was willing to struggle both to establish himself and to remain true to his principles.

The movie makes a good selection of events from Zola's life, looking both at his earlier years, when he was struggling to establish himself, and at his later years, when as a respected member of society he had to fight his own reluctance to remain true to his ideals. The supporting cast have smaller parts, but they generally do quite well. Vladimir Sokoloff has a couple of nice scenes as Cézanne, and his interactions with Muni are quite helpful in defining the main character, especially as he changes once attaining personal success. Joseph Schildkraut makes good use of his scenes as Dreyfus.

Zola's lifetime was also an interesting and often tumultuous period in France's own history, and the movie provides at least a small taste of that.

There was, for example, even more to the Dreyfus situation than is shown here, but it and other historical events are shown mainly as they involved Zola himself - otherwise, to do justice to the events in themselves, the movie would have had to be several times as long. There's plenty here as it is to make it worthwhile, both as a good drama and as a believable portrait of Zola.