The Life of Emile Zola (1937) on Netflix
Passed19371h 56mBiographyDrama
Émile Zola shares a Paris attic with painter Paul Cézanne while writing novels about injustice. Success brings him comfort until Lucie Dreyfus asks him to take up her husband's case.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.1/1010,127 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1862 Paris, Émile Zola writes in a shared attic with the painter Paul Cézanne. His fiancée Alexandrine gets him a job as a bookshop clerk, but his novel The Confessions of Claude upsets his employer and a police agent, and he loses the position. He witnesses injustice in a river slum, in the mines, and in the army and the government. A prostitute dodging a police raid gives him the idea for Nana, his first bestseller, and he marries Alexandrine and settles into a mansion. Cézanne, still unknown, visits and tells him he has become complacent, and their friendship ends. Captain Alfred Dreyfus is accused of spying and sent to Devil's Island, and Lucie Dreyfus asks Zola to take up her husband's case.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ben Urwand's 2013 book The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler says Warner Bros. head Jack L. Warner ordered the word "Jew" excised from the script of The Life of Emile Zola, and that Nazi consul Georg Gyssling was occasionally allowed to review films before release, with changes sometimes made from his comments.
- Paul Muni's climactic courtroom speech was filmed in one six-minute take, though Wallis asked that crowd shots be interspersed; at the time, it was the longest continuous courtroom scene.
- Wallis and Blanke argued over Ben Welden's performance as Paul Cézanne, and Vladimir Sokoloff was brought in to reshoot Welden's scenes; the reshoots ran production ten days over schedule, finishing on May 10.
- Wallis wanted Josephine Hutchinson, who had played Louis Pasteur's wife, as the female lead, but Blanke disagreed and they compromised on Gloria Holden.
- The French government allegedly banned The Life of Emile Zola in 1939, possibly because of the sensitivity of the Dreyfus affair.
- The Life of Emile Zola received ten Academy Award nominations at the 10th Academy Awards, becoming the first film in Oscar history to reach double digits, and won three awards.
- The Life of Emile Zola was the second biographical film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, after The Great Ziegfeld, and the first Warner Bros. Pictures release to win Best Picture.
