Word: dreyfusism
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...that Author Painter chronicles were with Reynaldo Hahn. a talented pianist and composer, and Lucien Daudet. foppish son of the famed novelist Alphonse. From each, Proust tried to extract the unconditional love his mother had given him as a child; in each he was disillusioned. But it was the Dreyfus affair that deglamorized high society for Proust. Jewish on his mother's side, he courageously declared himself a Dreyfusard and helped to circulate the first petition for Dreyfus' release. Ironically, when Dreyfus was finally released, Proust found him as unappealing an ex-martyr as the other socialites...
Stone is a key witness in the imaginary affaire Dujardin, which has for post-World War II France all the moral and political catnip of a Dreyfus case. Dujardin, a member of the French underground, is in jail, has been marked for death as one of the guilty who directed the massacre of a whole French village called Montpelle (which calls to mind France's nonfictional Oradour-Sur-Glane). To the French Left he becomes a martyr, and "Liberez Dujardin" is scrawled on every wall in Paris. Only the evidence of Stone, who is now symbolical of the dead...
Director José Ferrer plunges bravely into the mess at the point where Actor Jose Ferrer, who plays the hero, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is sitting at his desk in the Ministere de la Guerre. He is a braid-proud artillery officer assigned to operations and marked with the uncomfortable distinction of being the first Jew ever elevated to the French General Staff. Meanwhile, over at the German embassy, another French officer, one Major Esterhazy, is making arrangements to supplement his army pay with German gold, for which he is ready to betray French military secrets. When one of Esterhazy...
...this single piece of evidence, Dreyfus is arrested and charged with espionage. To avoid the scandal of a trial, which would involve a public admission that the General Staff itself had been corrupted by the Germans, the army tries to shame Dreyfus into suicide. He refuses, and the army is forced to convene a court-martial and invent enough evidence to support the charges. Convicted of high treason, Captain Dreyfus is publicly degraded and stripped of rank in the presence of the Minister of War himself, General Mercier, who looks down with cool indifference upon the ruined man, apparently...
...story of Dreyfus' recall, retrial, re-conviction, and eventual pardon, vindication and restoration to rank forms one of the most dramatic chapters in French history; but it makes the dullest part of this picture. In this part of the real story, the center of interest naturally shifts from Dreyfus to Emile Zola, Anatole France, Georges Clemenceau, Jean Jaurés, Maitre Labori and the other famous men who turned the Dreyfus Affair from a case into a cause. If only the camera had shifted with the interest, the picture might have built up an impressive concluding crescendo. Unfortunately, what...