Word: zola
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Life of Emile Zola is an original treatment for the screen of the career of a great 19th-Century French novelist whose name will be less familiar to most of the cinema public than the 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...
...Zola, in the opening scenes, is the son of a middle-class French family, living in writer's poverty in a Paris garret. He shares both the garret and a single pair of trousers with Painter Paul Cezanne (Vladimir Sokoloff). One day Zola listens to the story of a girl of the Paris streets, sees in it the material for a novel and writes his first great success, Nana (a tale with which Producer Samuel Goldwyn and beauteous Actress Anna Sten had less success 54 years later...
...Zola, in time, come great fame, wealth, position and what he takes for contentment. Some years later, the young radical has become a fat and 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...
...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...
Paul Muni says that in any performance he will be satisfied if he leaves with his 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...