Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

That was an excellent one.

recommended

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Copyright 14 July 1937 by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Hollywood Theater, 11 August 1937. U.S. release: 2 October 1937. U.K. release: October 1937. Australian release: 3 February 1938. 13 reels. 116 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Emile Zola secures a new trial for the unjustly condemned Captain Alfred Dreyfus.NOTES: Academy Award, Best Picture (defeating The Awful Truth, Captains Courageous, Dead End, The Good Earth, In Old Chicago, Lost Horizon, 100 Men and a Girl, Stage Door and A Star Is Born).Academy Award, Supporting Actor, Joseph Schildkraut (defeating Ralph Bellamy in The Awful Truth, Thomas Mitchell in Hurricane, H. B. Warner in Lost Horizon and Roland Young in Topper). Academy Award, Best Screenplay (defeating The Awful Truth, Captains Courageous, Stage Door and A Star Is Born).Other Academy Award nominations: Paul Muni, Best Actor (winner was Spencer Tracy for Captains Courageous): William Dieterle, Directing (winner was Leo McCarey for The Awful Truth); Anton Grot, Art Direction (winner was Stephen Goosson for Lost Horizon); Sound Recording (winner was The Hurricane); Music Score (winner was 100 Men and a Girl). New York Film Critics Awards: Best Motion Picture; and Best Male Performance, Paul Muni. Best Picture of 1937, voted by the film critics of America in The Film Daily annual poll. Negative cost: $1,000,000. Domestic gross: $1,600,000 (including the 1938 re-issue). For another treatment of the Dreyfus case, see José Ferrer's I Accuse! (1958).COMMENT: The awards say it all. I think it's a marvelous movie: persuasive, forceful, compelling, compassionate, a rich emotional experience, with Muni, Schildkraut, Sondergaard and all the supporting players — with Dieterle and the whole array of his superlative Warner Bros. technicians — at the absolute peak of their form. One of the most stirring, involving and absolutely suspenseful films ever made. I was moved, thrilled, excited, fascinated — and that surely is what movies are all about. Lavishly produced and zestfully directed, The Life of Emile Zola is easily the most passionately powerful film of the 1930s.OTHER VIEWS: The fusing of realism and social consciousness into a high-charged entertainment was a specialty of the Warner Bros. studio during the 1930s. Not that other studios — even MGM — did not attempt this type of movie. They did. But it was Warner Bros. who not only led the way but crafted more movies in this category than all other production houses combined. The Life of Emile Zola is one of the most eminent examples of these superb entertainment skills. Muni gives the stand-out performance of his career (how Tracy's ridiculously phony Portuguese fisherman tipped Muni out of the Academy Award is a mystery I'll never solve) and Dieterle his most polished, pacey and pictorially dramatic job of imaginative directing.

I really like this film. Paul Muni plays the consummate hero in this as he does everything within his power to overturn the conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, whose only crime was being Jewish. The man who actually committed the crime was out enjoying himself with his freedom intact. Despite every effort of the French military getting in the way of his efforts, he never gives in, even though his status as the most popular author in France is at stake. What started out as an effort to simply approach the law becomes his life's work. This case became one of the most high profile in European history. The reason the movie pulled punches, however, was because Dreyfus was a Jew but most didn't want to recognize the oppression. Of course, Hitler was plying his trade.

Half biopic, half fictionalization of the famed Dreyfus affair, "The Life of Emile Zola" nabbed Warner Bros. its first Best Picture Academy Award in 1937.It's a handsome, intelligent production, even if it is a bit sanctimonious and heavy handed in its hagiography of Zola. I expected that from a film of this time period, though, so it didn't get in the way of my enjoyment. I had the same reaction to Paul Muni in the title role that I always have to his performances -- in his opening scenes I didn't know if I would be able to handle two hours of his eye-rolling, scenery-chewing overacting, but before very long, he had won me over and impressed me with his range. Joseph Schildkraut won the Best Supporting Actor award in what was only the second year for that category for his portrayal of Dreyfus. Gale Sondergaard plays Dreyfus's suffering wife the year after she won the very first Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in "Anthony Adverse." "The Life of Emile Zola" is an early example of how important the art of makeup is outside of monster movies in physically transforming actors into the characters they're playing.In addition to its wins for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor, the film was awarded the Oscar for Best Screenplay. It received ten nominations total, which was a new nomination record at the time. The categories in which it was nominated but did not win were: Best Director (William Dieterle), Best Actor (Muni), Best Original Story, Best Assistant Director (Russ Saunders), Best Art Direction, Best Scoring, and Best Sound Recording.Grade: A-

You really have to like these Warner Brothers biographical movies from the 1930s. They're in black and white, true, and they may gloss events and invent speeches a little differently from the way you and I might, but they're -- well -- they're EDUCATIONAL. You can learn basic historical facts from them. This isn't an achievement to be taken lightly, not in a country in which 28% of voters believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, or in which a substantial number of students think Watergate took place before 1900.I don't mean that the Warners' biopics were academic studies. Far from it. As here, we generally see a hero (or heroine) perform some socially disapproved of act and then being redeemed. He usually dies at the end, either with a peaceful smile on his face, his work on earth now being complete, or with a pen or a pistol in his hand, full of fight. Zola gets the pen treatment.Emile Zola, author of any number of infrequently read French novels ("Nana" may be his best known), was a famous figure at the time of this story, the end of the 19th century, when he decided to take up the cause of Alfred Dreyfus, an innocent army officer who had been convicted of treason, partly because he was Jewish.Zola and his big mouth intervene after Dreyfus is sent to "a living death" on Devil's Island. Zola writes an inflammatory newspaper article -- "J'Accuse," which the movie helpfully translates as "I Accuse" -- and provokes a suit for libel. The French Army is mostly a proud and cohesive group and although the evidence against Dreyfus was rigged, nobody wants to admit it. Do Zola's strenuous efforts pay off at the end? If they didn't, Warners wouldn't have made this movie.The formula usually remained the same, with some variations. (Sometimes the resolute hero alienates a former friend, and so forth.) Paul Muni starred in more than one of them. He overacts, but that's part of getting the MESSAGE across. When he gives a rousing speech at the trial, he huffs and puffs, he waves his hands, his chin snaps up and down like a traveling block on an oil rig, and when he's not shouting, he's hissing his lines."The truth is on the march -- and nothing will stop it!", he says confidently. I don't think Emile Zola ever said any such thing. I have doubts that anyone, at any time in the course of human history, has ever said such a thing, although they might have written it in a pamphlet or as a line of dialog in an entertaining and educational movie.Some may notice some irony in the fact that the Army convicted Dreyfus partly because of anti-Semitism but never wanted to admit it, while the movie hardly even mentions it because the studios didn't want to bring up the edgy subject.