Oscars Retrospective: The Life of Emile Zola (10th Academy Awards Review)
If you’re the type to follow this series, then I’m sure you know by now the phrase, Oscar bait. This is a derogatory term used to refer to a film that was built from the ground-up specifically to get someone an Oscar. It’s a mocking phrase that leads to a lot of pigeonholing and can be tricky to define, especially when referring to films that were in fact made to get Oscars but are genuinely good movies. Generally speaking, you can see it as a type. It’s the type that most people in Hollywood circles love, hits a checklist of clichés, comes off as very forced and manufactured, usually pretty schmaltzy, you get the idea.
The Life of Emile Zola was that kind of movie back in the 1930s. If you’ve been going down the list of films here, you’ll probably have started noticing some patterns with a lot of early frontrunners and trend-setters that the Academy loved and they tend to culminate here in The Life of Emile Zola. You have the epic courtroom battle, you have the cooky old main character standing up to the establishment, you have the dangers of mob justice, you have the inspirational speech, you have it all.
The Life of Emile Zola actually doesn’t have a whole lot of the life of Emile Zola in it. For those who don’t know, Emile Zola was a naturalist author in 1800s France, played here by Paul Muni, and the first 20-30 minutes details his life and how he became an author and… it honestly sucks. It’s rushed, there’s little conflict and they don’t give you a good impression on what makes Emile Zola’s writings so popular.
Where the movie does get interesting, though, is once it introduces the Dreyfus Affair and how Zola gets tangled up with it. Quick little history lesson: in 1894, the French intercepted a piece of intelligence informing them that there was someone in their ranks that was selling state secrets to the Germans. Heads of the army quickly came to the conclusion that the spy was Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut) and threw him in jail. When evidence came to light that he was innocent, the conspirators covered it up rather than admit their mistake. Dreyfus’ family recruited Zola to write letters exposing the truth, causing him to get in trouble for treason.
All of that really happened and is commonly cited as encouraging people in first-world nations to be more ready to question the military. And the real-life Emile Zola (spelled in reality as Émile Zola but the film removed the accent which I’m thankful for so I don’t have to type it every time I say his name here) was involved in it. One aspect of this film that I hear brought up as to why it won the Oscar and had relevance at the time was because of how it tackled the issue of anti-Semitism which was rapidly becoming a problem in the world at the time which, yeah, let’s talk about that.
The main reason why Alfred Dreyfus was the first person that the French military went after was because he was Jewish and anti-Semitism was all the rage back then. This movie came out in 1937 and anti-Semitism was a big issue at the time as there were several world leaders/historical monsters in Europe who were starting to make anti-Semitism state policy.
While you would think that this is the reason why the movie got made, it’s actually the exact opposite as the head of Warner Bros., Jack Warner, forbade the director from bringing any of the racial bigotries into the film. I guess maybe it hit a little too close to him since he was Jewish. Or maybe it was because America wasn’t yet at the point where they all knew that Nazism was wrong and still wanted the film to be released in Germany. Most likely a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
At first this seems like mindless censorship, and that’s because it is, but it’s a 30s film, what do you expect? If anything, I actually think that this makes the film more fun as the director still included the anti-Semitic leanings of the villains but had to be more subtle about it to get past his producers, which leads to smarter filmmaking. For example, when the bad guys first decide to ruin Dreyfus’ life, they pull his file and point at it but in the close-up, you see the finger pointing at the word Jewish.
Or how whenever they talk to or about Dreyfus, they’re very condescending, like he’s something way below them. There’s a lot of little touches like that that help them get across the darker part of this story without being overt about it because they would never have gotten away with it back then. Also, I might be reaching on this one, but does anyone else think that the leader of the conspirators looks like Joseph Stalin?
Where The Life of Emile Zola really shines is in the courtroom drama that dominates the back half of the film. While you could say that this was a prime influencer in the courtroom drama genre, this is nothing new as we’ve seen films that have done that by this point such as A Free Soul (1932) and Fury (1936). But it’s still a fun courtroom drama simply because of how much is against our hero. This guy is going up against the entire state of France: the public hates him, the army hates him and the judge (Frank Sheridan) especially hates him.
One thing I really love about this movie is Emile’s lawyer, Maitre Labori (Donald Crisp). In any modern courtroom drama, this character would usually be fresh out of law school, woefully inexperienced and have questionable at best credentials. This is done to try to make it more of a feel-good moment when they win but it is a cliché that has been done a little bit to death.
In this movie, however, the character actually comes off as a real lawyer. This is clearly a guy who’s been practicing law for most of his life and is a very eloquent, intelligent, shrewd attorney. I honestly like this better than the typical “unconventional lawyer” trope because when someone this learned and experienced is struggling to build the case, that gets you even more invested and really wondering if the good guys are going to be able to win.
The villains are also a lot of fun. The actors do a great job at making these people totally despicable on all accounts. They’re racist, they’re pretentious and they refuse to admit, under any circumstances whatsoever, that there may be a small possibility that they screwed up. Many of the side-characters are also pretty well-acted, though I don’t quite know why the guy who played Captain Dreyfus won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He’s good but not “performance of the year” good.
Really, the weakest part of The Life of Emile Zola is Emile Zola. The film should’ve just been called The Dreyfus Affair since that’s really where the meat of the story is. As mentioned above, you could cut the first 20-30 minutes of this film and lose nothing. Plus, this character is so stock. Paul Muni is literally doing the exact same thing he did in The Story of Louis Pasteur a year ago. Only in The Story of Louis Pasteur, at least, the character brought in the scientist aspect and they allowed time to watch him engage in the scientific process. Here, he’s just the typical outcast who stands against society.
His final speech at the end of the trial is especially dull. It’s supposed to be the climax of the entire film but you could write beat for beat what he’s going to say, what the moral is, “you must do what is right, not what is easy” blah blah blah etc. etc. and so forth. Granted, this movie did come out in 1937 so it might be a little forgivable but I feel that even at the time this was starting to become cliché. It also just feels redundant coming off of the very aggressive, loud, exciting arguments and cross-examinations from Maitre Labori. I don’t blame Paul Muni, he did fine, it’s more of a writing issue and the way that the film is set up.
Despite my grievances, I still think that this is a good movie. Once the Dreyfus Affair is set up, it does get very interesting and I was starting to wonder how the main character was going to get out of it, if he would and really growing to despise the villains. Also, I do like how the villains eventually are defeated. Without spoiling it, it stays true to the real-life events of the Dreyfus Affair and it doesn’t quite go in the direction you would expect.
If you’re into 30s films, The Life of Emile Zola is a good one to check out. It hasn’t aged with total grace but there’s still something there worth seeing. I wouldn’t quite consider a milestone like some of the other Oscar wins but I could see how it might be a frontrunner for best movie of that year.
But was it actually film of the year though?
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2
3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2
4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2
5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2
6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2
7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2
8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2
9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2
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