The Life of Emile Zola

A quick explanation for anyone who's coming here from holidailies and isn't a regular reader: I'm watching all of the Best Picture Academy Award winning movies (well, all that are available on DVD - there are a couple that aren't). When I watch one, I post a bit of a review here, which is what this entry is.

And without further ado:

The Life of Emile Zola
1937
Starring:
Paul Muni
Joseph Schildkraut
Vladimir Sokoloff

This is a movie about Emile Zola, a writer and political activist from the 1800s (who also happens to be best friends with Paul Cezanne). It starts out when he and Cezanne are young and poor, sharing a small apartment with holes in the windows. He sees injustices and writes books about them, which actually get printed, and he becomes rather famous for these. After a while he has gotten so rich and famous (and older) that he feels like he has done his time as an activist, and wants no more to do with it. Until...

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason (this all takes place in France, by the way), but he's innocent. The French government needed someone to take the fall for the crime, and he was the one chosen. He was sentenced to an isolated island, trapped in a one room cell, with hardly even the necessities to stay alive (ha! I'm listening to Staying Alive as I write that. Funny, yes? :). Even after proof comes to light that shows his innocence and another man's guilt, they refuse to set him free, because if they admit they were wrong, it will look bad for them.

So Emile ends up fighting for him - landing him in trouble with the government, and ending up on trial himself for slander.

This movie started our really slowly, and I was afraid this was going to be the first Oscar winning movie that I wouldn't like at all. But of course, it got better. I mean, all of these movies won Best Picture, it's not like they're going to suck. Once the things started happening with Dreyfus, it got much better.

I won't give away the whole ending, in case you want to watch it for yourselves. :)

I give this movie 4 stars out of 5. It could have started off less boring, but otherwise it was very good.

(By the way - I love old movies, I really do, but I'm thinking I'm going to need to watch some newer movies soon, because I'm kind of wearing thin on the black and white movies full of actors who are now dead. It's a good thing we have the new Hulk movie at home to watch.)

(Also, on a non-movie related note, it's freaking cold here today (3 degrees when I got to work), and it's very cold in my office, and I'm sick of being cold. It either needs to be spring now, or I need to move south again.)

(Asides over. Thanks. :)