Emile Zola

  • La bête humaine [The Human Beast] (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) For Hollywood film noir fans, La bête humaine’s main attraction is that it’s the film that inspired Human Desire, a pretty good 1954 Fritz Lang effort. As such, the original film is part of that group of French movies that led to film noir, the rough romantic crime poetry filtered through later post-war American sensibilities. Of course, compared to the slick cinematography of latter-day Hollywood, La bête humaine is coarser and blander. But writer-director Jean Renoir turns in a perfectly enjoyable effort, inspired but not beholden to the source Émile Zola novel—the biggest change being the focus of the film on a genre thriller narrative blended with romantic fatalism. It’s really not a feel-good film—and when you combine the film’s sentimental but merciless ending with Jean Gabin’s lead performance, you end up with something that would make a splendid double-feature with Pepe le Moko. That, or pair it with Human Desire—both are well worth watching together, if only to appreciate the subtle shifts in tone and atmosphere.

  • The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

    The Life of Emile Zola (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (YouTube Streaming, November 2019) I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to The Life of Emile Zola, expecting an average 1930s biopic, but that was without counting on Paul Muni’s take on Zola, and the lively indignation of the script as it focuses on l’affaire Dreyfus. It helps that this presentation of Zola portrays the French writer as a crusader fighting for justice, and that the Dreyfus story becomes a high-stakes political scandal that touches upon the corruption of the French elite. Still, there’s only so much you can do with a good premise, and so the film does quite well on execution, with a sharp script that’s not above rearranging facts for dramatic impact (or portraying an exile as heroic) and Muni’s superlative performance at a time when Muni was one of the reigning actors in Hollywood. Looking up additional details about the Dreyfus affair and Zola’s role in it, I was disappointed that the entire Jewish angle of the original scandal was completely excised from the movie … and that the tidiness of the tragic conclusion is a fabrication. Still, the film itself is largely exact in portraying the monstrous injustice that Zola contested, and very entertaining in depicting Zola himself. It all amounts to a capable early example of Hollywood firing on all cylinders—The Life of Emile Zola was the first film nominated for ten Oscars, and walked away with three Awards, including Best Picture. It’s probably one of the early Best Picture winners that has aged best.