The Life of Emile Zola (1937) Director: William Dieterle
“Our fight is only half won. We must work, my friends, work – by speech, by pen, by action.
We of France, who gave the world the boon of liberty, shall we not now give it justice?”
★★★★☆
The Life of Emile Zola is a remarkable biographical film about the life of Émile Zola, the great French writer and critic, and his close involved with the notorious Dreyfus Affair (based on the 1928 book Zola and His Time by Matthew Josephson. In the film, Émile Zola is played by Paul Muni, notable for his performance in the classic gangster film Scarface in 1932, and his Academy Award winning performance in The Story of Louis Pasteur in 1936. During the ’30s, Paul Muni was Warner Brothers’ chosen star for the studio’s serious “Oscar bait” productions –and with The Life of Emile Zola their strategy was a success. It won three Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Screenplay); and it was nominated for a record-setting ten Academy Awards. Paul Muni lost the Best Actor award to Spencer Tracy for his performance in Captains Courageous. The Life of Emile Zola was actually initially offered to director Ernst Lubitsch at Paramount, but since he felt only Paul Muni could play the lead, Lubitsch made the unusual step of helping to shepherd the script over to Warner Brothers, a rival of Paramount.
The first half of the film tells the story of Émile Zola, a poor but rebellious young man, incapable of holding a job due to his controversial writings (he is a soft-spoken but sharp-tongued man of letters). Zola shares a flat with the great artist Paul Cézanne. In time, Zola grows wealthy when his book Nana becomes a success, and Cézanne eventually leaves him for the countryside after reminding Zola of his humble origins. Zola then continues writing a string of other successful books. But the second half of the film tells the story of the Dreyfus Affair, in which Alfred Dreyfus –a Jewish captain in the army– has been wrongly convicted of being a traitor to the French Army. He is then sentenced to prison on Devil’s Island but Dreyfus’s wife eventually approaches Zola for help. Zola, remembering the words of his old friend Cézanne, decides to take up the case with his famous publication: J’accuse. However, after a trial in which Zola is found guilty of libel, he flees France for London. In the end, all is put to right in later years as Dreyfus is returned to Paris and reinstated in the army, promoted to Major, while Zola is found dead (accidentally) due carbon monoxide poisoning the night before Dreyfus’s renewed trial. Zola is given a hero’s burial in Paris.
The Life of Emile Zola has been rightly criticized for failing to fully explore the role antisemitism played in the Dreyfus Affair. At the time, Hollywood was eager to appease the rise of Hitler in Germany, and they tended to whitewash antisemitism in order to gain access to the lucrative German market. In other words, in the 1930s there was a wave of paranoia about “anti-German” propaganda emanating from tinseltown –many directors were corralled into creating sanitized pro-German movies. At any rate, I found The Life of Emile Zola to be a nice enough biographical picture, albeit excessively sentimental and drab at times. Paul Muni delivers a mostly great performance as Émile Zola, as does Joseph Schildkraut (winner of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) for his performance as Alfred Dreyfus, and the film’s score by Max Steiner is simply wonderful.
Credits:
- Director: William Dieterle
- Screenplay by: Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, Norman Reilly Raine
- Story by: Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg
- Based on: Zola and His Time, a 1928 book by Matthew Josephson
- Produced by: Henry Blanke
- Starring:
- Paul Muni…..Émile Zola
- Gloria Holden…..Alexandrine Zola
- Gale Sondergaard…..Lucie Dreyfus
- Joseph Schildkraut…..Captain Alfred Dreyfus
- Cinematography: Tony Gaudio
- Edited by: Warren Low
- Music by: Max Steiner
- Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
10th Academy Awards
After being delayed a week due to the 1938 Los Angeles flood, the 10th Annual Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Biltmore Hotel on March 10, 1938. This was the year of ten nominations for The Life of Emile Zola (the first film to receive ten nominations) and the first color film to be nominated for Best Picture, A Star Is Born.
- Best Picture: The Life of Emile Zola
- The Awful Truth
- Captains Courageous
- Dead End
- The Good Earth
- In Old Chicago
- Lost Horizon
- One Hundred Men and a Girl
- Stage Door
- A Star Is Born
- Best Director: Leo McCarey – The Awful Truth
- Sidney Franklin – The Good Earth
- William Dieterle – The Life of Emile Zola
- Gregory La Cava – Stage Door
- William Wellman – A Star Is Born
- Best Actor: Spencer Tracy – Captains Courageous as Manuel Fidello
- Charles Boyer – Conquest as Napoleon Bonaparte
- Fredric March – A Star Is Born as Norman Maine
- Robert Montgomery – Night Must Fall as Danny
- Paul Muni – The Life of Emile Zola as Émile Zola
- Best Actress: Luise Rainer – The Good Earth as O-Lan
- Irene Dunne – The Awful Truth as Lucy Warriner
- Greta Garbo – Camille as Marguerite Gautier
- Janet Gaynor – A Star Is Born as Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester
- Barbara Stanwyck – Stella Dallas as Stella Dallas
- Best Original Story: A Star Is Born – William A. Wellman and Robert Carson
- Black Legion – Robert Lord
- In Old Chicago – Niven Busch
- The Life of Emile Zola – Heinz Herald and Geza Herczeg
- One Hundred Men and a Girl – Hanns Kräly
Did the right film win Best Picture?
The Life of Emile Zola is a fine enough biopic, but not a truly stellar Best Picture winner in my view. It would have been extraordinary if the Academy had honored Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937) which would be nominated the following year (the first foreign film to be nominated for Best Picture). Also, somehow Disney’s staggering debut animated feature-length production Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was overlooked this year, though it would be acknowledged the following year with an honorary Oscar.
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