Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. The Life of Emile Zola is the tenth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. One interesting thing you will notice when looking back at all the old films granted cinema’s highest honor by a bygone Hollywood is the way that they inform the structure of genre on through today. All Quiet on the Western Front is still a gold standard for war films and much of It Happened One Night can be seen in even modern romantic comedies. Another observation that can be made of classic films is the way that lack of existing convention lead to films that buck any real concept of structure we have today. The Life of Emile Zola is one of those films.
Ostensibly a biopic about the eponymous French novelist, The Life of Emile Zola shifts from biography to military intrigue to courtroom drama. Although centered around the rise of Zola, famous in the late 19th century for his naturalistic writing about the ails of modern France, the film is rarely pinned down to simply its subject. We see Zola as a struggling young writer discover his voice as he is looked on suspiciously for exposing injustice in his home of Paris. As his star rises Zola falls complacent, satiated by his wealth and prominence. At this point the story abandons Zola almost entirely to focus on the court martial of Alfred Dreyfus, a man wrongly accused, and ultimately convicted, of treason. Dreyfus’s case takes over much of the middle part of the film, a baffling choice for viewers without a familiarity to Zola’s story. Years later, new evidence brought to Zola by Dreyfus’s wife convinces him to speak out against the undue persecution of an innocent man at which point he is put on trial for libel against the military. Undoubtedly the structure of the film is bizarre but in a way it is also exhilarating. Rather than a plain accounting of a man’s life, The Life of Emile Zola is a sort of accounting of the liberalizing movement that man represented. A modern viewer might not have a clue what the crackdown on Dreyfus has to do with the titular character but the film will have you begging to know what Zola will do about it. As fascinating as it is to see a film eschew any of the basic understandings we now have of a biopic, by being so unmoored from any one plot line, The Life of Emile Zola ends up something of a beautiful disaster. No one thing gets the focus it needs. Praise for Zola’s early works lack the context needed to really understand him as a champion of the wretched. Without that, his role in the Dreyfus affair feels underbaked. Even the courtroom drama is too disorganized to land in the way a newer film might. More than any of the other Best Picture winners to this point, The Life of Emile Zola feels the most foreign to modern eyes. It is not inherently problematic in the way that some contemporary winners are — although there is some valid criticism of the film’s dismissal of Dreyfus’s Jewishness — but films structured like The Life of Emile Zola just do not exist anymore. That fact makes watching the tenth Best Picture winner more interesting than it is enjoyable. Aside from the omission of anti-semitism as a factor in the persecution of Dreyfus — a big caveat — The Life of Emile Zola is also another example of early Hollywood’s embrace of a more progressive world view. Wealth and fame makes Zola complacent and he is only reinvigorated by rejoining the fight for justice. The military and French courts are subject of scrutiny for the film and there is a clear identification of true patriotism being the willingness to criticize your country when they come up short. Beyond the form and message, there is little transcendent about the tenth Best Picture winner. Paul Muni plays Zola across his life with enthusiasm but can lose some of his grounding in many of his characters monologues. Similarly, William Dieterle’s direction is capable but unexceptional. Looking at it now, it is mostly clear why The Life of Emile Zola stands as one of the least impactful winners. Equal parts unique and uninspired, the film has its heart in a good place and deserves some credit for that at least. 6/10
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