I have to be honest with you. This film frustrated me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an excellent film in many ways. However, I feel that it could have been a great film and an important film and a classic film, and it just missed the opportunity to be all of those things. Perhaps if it had been The Trial of Emile Zola rather than  The Life of Emile Zola it might have achieves that greatness.

Emile Zola was a real-life person who was a writer and did most of his work during the second half of the 19th Century. The film portrays his early life as a rebellious idealistic young man who craved justice for ordinary people who were not likely to receive it in the Paris of the 1860’s. Much of what he wrote was censored by the government, as his work is largely critical of government and military policies, and he spent much of his early life without two pennies to rub together.

The film depicts this very effectively. Zola, played with irascible pluck by Paul Muni, shares an apartment in Paris with his friend, the painter Paul Cezanne. As they discuss the politics of the day, they have to burn the pages of a frivolous book in order to keep their fire going. However, they’re happy even in their poverty because they believe that they’re doing important work. They’re doing work for the masses that are being kept silent by a corrupt ruling class. Their dignity is intact and they’re confident in their convictions.

During one scene, they’re sitting in a cafe as a woman rushes in. She’s just come from a suffrage demonstration and most of the other women have been rounded up and arrested. Zola and Cezanne invite her to join them and they tell the police when they arrive that the woman has been with them the entire night. The woman’s plight inspires Zola to write is first best-seller, Nana.

Nana becomes an instant best-seller and Zola is revealed to have a hand on the pulse of the people. In a touching character moment, Zola walks through the rain with his umbrella falling apart and sees the copies of his book being sold in a store. He then goes to his publisher to ask for a small advance so that he can buy a new umbrella, saying that he’s sure that his book will sell enough to cover the advance. Incredulous, the publisher tells him that it’s already outsold his previous advance, and he presents Zola with a check for 10,000 francs, more money than Zola has seen in his life.

He then writes a scathing critique of the government and military for getting France into a needless war with Prussia. It’s a stunning rebuke that turns Zola into the voice of the people. He spends the next three decades pumping out book after book, and becomes a revered member of society, even gaining admittance into the Academy. He’s rich beyond his wildest dreams and he feels that he’s accomplished everything he set out to do. However, his old friend Cezanne calls him to task. He tells Zola that he’s forgotten the spirit that got him to these lofty heights. Cezanne is afraid that he too will forget it someday, so he’s leaving Paris to go to the sea where he will hopefully never lose his rebelliousness.

Meanwhile, the top brass of the French military discovers that a secret communique  has been sent to the Germans by one of their officers. Their rush to find a scapegoat lands them on Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a man with an otherwise spotless record, who also happens to be Jewish. Dreyfus is convicted, stripped of his rank and sent to life imprisonment on Devils Island, a desolate place 5,500 miles away off the coast of South America.In fact, their rush to judgment is so complete, that when another officer discovers evidence that would exonerate Dreyfus and put the real culprit in prison, the military decides that the scandal that the truth would be worse because they believe that French citizens would lose faith in the army. Another sham trial is perpotrated, only this time, the defendant is wrongly cleared and it appears that Dreyfus will spend the rest of his days living in a hell on earth for a crime that he did not commit.

Convinced of her husband’s innocence, but with nowhere else to turn, Dreyfus’ wife Lucie goes to Zola and asks him to help her fight for justice for her husband. But Zola refuses. Something in him has changed. He’s no longer the young, idealistic social warrior searching for lost causes. He’s comfortable. He’s rich. He sees no need to fight for Dreyfus when, for all appearances, Dreyfus was rightly convicted in a court of law. Despondent, Lucie leaves his house, but she leaves the evidence that she collected behind. Zola sees this and tries to run after her, but she is already gone. After admiring his letter of admittance into the Academy, Zola starts to thumb through the evidence that Lucie Dreyfus presented to him. The more he reads, the angrier he becomes. his thirst for justice has returned and it will not be satiated until Dreyfus is cleared.

Zola writes his now famous letter, J’Accuse (I Accuse), to the President of the French Republic, accusing members of the military of a terrible miscarriage of justice in the name of protecting its tattered image. There were a couple of reasons Zola did this. The first reason was to denounce the deplorable actions of the military. However,  the second reason was the most clever. Zola knew that writing such a document would force the military’s hand into charging Zola with libel. This would offer Zola an opportunity in his libel case to reintroduce the facts of the Dreyfus Affair. Unfortunately Zola didn’t really get that opportunity. The judge in the case was not impartial, and the military had its propaganda machine working overtime to villainize and de-legitimize Zola in the eyes of the public. Despite an eloquent closing argument made by Zola himself, he’s found guilty of slander and reluctantly leaves Paris for London so that he can continue to fight the good fight in exile rather than go to jail.

Eventually new leadership takes over in France and both Dreyfus and Zola are cleared and allowed to return to France. Reinvigorated, Zola is ready to start writing again. The idealist has returned. Unfortunately a leaky stove pipe releases enough carbon monoxide into his apartment that he passes away before he can witness the ceremony in which Dreyfus’ is reinstated to the army.

What I find most frustrating about this film is its lack of noting the anti-semitism that was the real reason for Dreyfus’ lengthy encarceration. Word has it that studio head Jack Warner, himself a Jew, wouldn’t allow the words Jew of Jewish to be in the dialogue. The only mention to Dreyfus heratige is on his ID card that notes that he’s a Jew. One of Hollywoods’ darkest periods was the mid and late 30’s where many studios refused to take on Nazi Germany head on. Like China today, Germany was the largest movie market outside of the United States, and losing that market, like losing the Chinese market today, radically affects the bottom line. So just as the remake of Red Dawn had to change the premise of China attacking the United States to North Korea attacking the United States, films critiquing that anti-semetic attitudes that dominated Nazi Germany of the time would not have been shown there. Thus, The Life of Emile Zola needed to airbrush over the main reason for the Dreyfus Affair. It’s frustrating because the military lacks real motivation in keeping him locked up. They say that it’s to protect the image of the army, and that’s somewhat reasonable, but it loses its effectiveness at a certain point. Anti-Semitism is a much more treachorous reason for taking away a person’s liberty, and at its core, a much more plausible reason as well. Whatever the reasons for glossing over this thematic element, the film suffers for it.

Did the Academy get it right?

Personally, I would have voted for Captains Courageous or Lost Horizon over The Life of Emile Zola, but that is mainly with the benefit of hindsight. It’s easy to look at a film like The Life of Emile Zola and judge Warner Bros, and in fact all of Hollywood, for cowtowing to Nazi Germany rather than taking them to task. The 1930’s were a very complicated time for a number of reasons and The Life of Emile Zola encapsulates many of those complexities. On the one hand, it uses the French military of the previous century as a parable and critique for what was happening in Germany. Yet, at the same time, it refused to go all the way and call Germany out for its blatant Anti-Semitism. It was a complex film for a complext tiem. I’m generally not a fan of remakes, but I would love for someone to take another stab at this one and modernize it in a way that focusses more on the real issues of the time without the self-imposed censorship of the original.