The Life of Emile Zola is a 1937 American biographical film about the 19th-century French author Émile Zola starring Paul Muni and directed by William Dieterle. It premiered at the Los Angeles Carthay Circle Theatre to great critical and financial success. Contemporary reviews ranked it as the greatest biographical film made up to that time. In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in his renowned newspaper opinion headlined J'Accuse…! Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902.
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francophone world, and it remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and antisemitism. The role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the conflict.
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. The incident has gone down in history as the Dreyfus affair, the reverberations from which were felt throughout Europe. It ultimately ended with Dreyfus's complete exoneration.
Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy was an officer in the French Army from 1870 to 1898. He gained notoriety as a spy for the German Empire and the actual perpetrator of the act of treason of which Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted in 1894.
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were perceived as unnecessarily mean. Crowther was an advocate of foreign-language films in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly those of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini.
J'Accuse…! is an 1898 open letter by Émile Zola concerning the Dreyfus affair.
Marie-Georges Picquart was a French Army officer and Minister of War. He is best known for his role in the Dreyfus affair, in which he played a key role in uncovering the real culprit.
The Secret Fury is a 1950 American black-and-white psychological thriller film noir directed by Mel Ferrer and starring Claudette Colbert, Robert Ryan and Jane Cowl.
Prisoner of Honor is a 1991 British made-for-television drama film directed by Ken Russell and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Oliver Reed and Peter Firth. It was made by Warner Bros. Television and distributed by HBO, and centers on the famous Dreyfus Affair. Richard Dreyfuss co-produced the film with Judith James, from a screenplay by Ron Hutchinson.
Hubert-Joseph Henry was a French Lieutenant-Colonel in 1897 involved in the Dreyfus affair. Arrested for having forged evidence against Alfred Dreyfus, he was found dead in his prison cell. He was considered a hero by the Anti-Dreyfusards.
"J'Accuse...!" is an open letter that was published on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore by Émile Zola in response to the Dreyfus affair. Zola addressed President of France Félix Faure and accused his government of antisemitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army General Staff officer who was sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage. Zola pointed out judicial errors and lack of serious evidence. The letter was printed on the front page of the newspaper and caused a stir in France and abroad. Zola was prosecuted for libel and found guilty on 23 February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.
Dreyfus is a 1930 German drama film directed by Richard Oswald and starring Fritz Kortner, Grete Mosheim, and Heinrich George.
Charles Armand Auguste Ferdinand Mercier du Paty de Clam was a French army officer, an amateur graphologist, and a key figure in the Dreyfus affair.
The French penal colony on Devil's Island was in operation from 1852–1946. Large numbers of mostly Hollywood films sere either set on the island or featured characters both real and fictional who had escaped from it. The French Government took a dim view of these films and banned several of them.
Auguste Mercier was a French general and Minister of War at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.
Auguste Scheurer-Kestner was a chemist, industrialist, a Protestant and an Alsatian politician. He was the uncle by marriage of the wife of Jules Ferry.
Mathieu Dreyfus (1857–1930) was an Alsatian Jewish industrialist and the older brother of Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer falsely convicted of treason in what became known as the Dreyfus affair. Mathieu was one of his brother's most loyal supporters throughout the affair.
George Gabriel de Pellieux was a French army officer who was best known for ignoring evidence during the Dreyfus affair, a scandal in which a Jewish officer was convicted of treason on the basis of a forgery.
An Officer and a Spy is a 2019 historical drama film directed by Roman Polanski about the Dreyfus affair, with a screenplay by Polanski and Robert Harris based on Harris's 2013 novel of the same name. The name J'Accuse has its origins in Émile Zola's bold article in l'Aurore in January 1898 in which the famous author accused many persons of France of continuing to support the increasingly blatantly erroneous accusations against Dreyfus.
