Word: dreyfuses
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...great 19th-Century French scientist whom Muni characterized so successfully last year. It is not with Zola the novelist that the story concerns itself, but with Zola the man who blew the lid off the greatest political scandal of its time, France's famed L'Affaire Dreyfus...
...fussy literary lion. His greatest satisfaction is no longer tilting at literary and political windmills but the prospect of election to the august French Academy. While Cezanne, after dinner one night, is telling Zola that his head is as overstuffed as his stomach, L'Affaire Dreyfus is having its beginnings. The General Staff of the French Army, discovering that someone has been selling military secrets to Germany, looks around for a scapegoat, finds one in Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut), the only Jew on the General Staff. Dreyfus is tried, convicted on built-up evidence, degraded and sent...
Zola becomes conscious of the Dreyfus case when the Captain's wife (Gale Sondergaard) begs his aid. All his old fighting instincts aroused, Zola writes his famous editorial J'accuse ("I accuse"), charging the army with conspiracy and daring anyone to try him for treason. The army takes the dare. Zola's trial lasts 30 minutes on the screen, with speeches longer than cinemaddicts are supposed by most Hollywood producers to be willing to hear. Zola's rhetoric is no match for the mass of lying evidence and the judge's prejudice. Convicted, he flees...
...audience one unforgettable moment. Audiences of Zola will probably recall at least three: the scene in which the nervous young novelist, unaware that his Nana has become an overnight sensation, begs a loan of two francs from his publisher; the scene in which he tries to convince Mme Dreyfus and himself that his days of fighting are over; the courtroom speech in which he justifies his interference as a private citizen in L'Affaire Dreyfus. A Memorable also is Joseph Schildkraut's scene in which Dreyfus, white and dim after four years on Devil's Island, tries...
...result of the most careful and concentrated preparation. A lover of makeup, he added extra hair to his own black beard and worked out an arrangement which took three hours each day to apply. He studied all the existing records of Zola's life and the Dreyfus case. At home he spoke his lines into a dictaphone and played them back for sound. He mastered characteristic gestures: the irritated twirling of the pince-nez, the contemplative tapping of the stomach, the sudden bursts of laughter...