The
1937 film version of “The Life of Emile Zola” continues. It fictionalizes, creates improbable new
scenes to represent relationships, events and themes that are “true” in an
artistic sense, but of questionable historical value. Yet the producers, directors, and the
players, along with the other specialists in lighting, design, costumes and
sound seek both to alert audiences to the dangers of dictatorial governments,
officious bureaucrats, and the ideal role of novelists and painters to uphold
the essential values of the Judeo-Christian values. But the question remains, a moral question,
of how far entertainers can tinker with facts—add, delete, distort—and remain
true to the integrity of the events they purport to represent on the silver
screen; and at times, when individuals are still alive or their families still treasure
their memories, at what point artistic license overtakes responsibility to the
truth.
Scene 11
The screen fills
with a date: 1870. Newspaper headlines show the “Fall of Sedan” and other sites
of French defeat during the Franco-Prussian War. Then suddenly, with no details of what that
conflict had been about or what its political consequences for the Empire of
Napoleon III, we are made to understand that the Siege of Paris has begun. Yet whether Zola was in residence during the
time of the Commune or what he may have experienced of the civil war that
followed, in some indeterminate passing of time another scene opens of a dinner
party with Zola and his wife and their guests Paul Cézanne, and some unnamed publisher
and his wife. In the midst of the meal, Zola
vows to reveal all in his new novel La Débåcle, though what he wants to
disclose that anyone else might not know about it a mystery. This whole episode seems to conflate time, with
twelve years swallowed up between the end of the war and the publication of the
novel.
Scene 12
Then we are notified by numerals on the screen
that it is 1892. General staff officers in
full uniform discuss Zola’s The Fall and vow revenge on the author who
exposed their incompetence and threaten the name of the Army. Twenty years on from the event, these men are
now the most responsible of France’s military elite and they know that they and
the nation are threatened by external powers, sometimes France, sometimes
Russia, but almost always Imperial Germany.
In this scene, a younger officer, Col. Picquard stands up for freedom of
speech, as though he were already the heroic figure of the Dreyfus Affair—or,
since the film exists in a context of other motion pictures and Hollywood
images, personalities, and glamor, some kind of Cary Grant/Mr Smith figure come
to Washington DC or any other capital city to stand up for principles against
an arrogant bureaucracy and a corrupt legislative elite. The other military officers glower at him. Probably all is fiction here, an artistic
illusion. It sets up the rather simple opposing
sides in the Dreyfus Affair still some years in the future, when Picquard and
Zola would confront the stupid, arrogant military hierarchy. In a sense, this
is a bit of nice condensation and foreshadowing; though as in earlier scenes,
the spectators are supposed to recognize historical allusions long before the
characters on the screen; while in another sense, since the entire film seems
to want to stand as a screen-cover for the events in Europe during the 1930s,
spectators receive hints about the corruption in France, Germany and elsewhere
that permits the rise of National Socialism—and perhaps in America of the soft,
naïve isolationism that stymies the country’s ability to prepare itself for the
imminent next world war.
Scene 13
But now the audience’s
attention is drawn back to the personal and the biographical, with Zola shown
as finally wealthy and famous. In a
reprise of the earlier scene in which he was told off by a policeman and fired
by his employer for dabbling in forbidden topics in his books, the now renowned
authors meets with the Chief Censor of the Republic who warns him not to write
more salacious and politically scandalous books. Full of confidence in his reputation and
assured of his powerful pen, however, Zola tells the boor to stand back and
vows to keep writing the truth. A new
beginning to Zola’s life seems at the point of opening, one in which he will be
the champion of truth and justice. As
the next scene shows, the Hollywood directors are playing fast and loose with
chronology, perhaps seeking dramatic effect by building up Zola’s credentials
prior to the last major conflict in his life.
Scene 14
Here through a
long series of book covers flashing across the screen Zola’s many well-known
novels are put on display, an indication of the author’s successes. Perhaps the
men and women seated in movie theatres in late 1930s America, beset by the
Depression and vaguely aware of the events in Europe that will soon transform
their lives, are meant to recognize these titles, to be impressed by the power
of the written word, and to become sympathetic to the cause he will represent
on behalf of ordinary people everywhere. With their own leaders befuddled by
these ominous tides of history, frightened of another world war, unable to
fathom the real intentions of Hitler and Mussolini, and still suffering from
the Great Depression, where else can they turn to, not just for light
entertainment and distraction, but for insight and direction on “what must be
done”?
Scene 15
Then the scene
changes again. Another dinner party now at
Zola’s luxurious home in Médun, outside of Paris. He, Madam Zola and their old friend Paul Cézanne
are shown laughing and drinking, enjoying the bounty of the Glorious Epoch of
the 1890s. Zola shows off valuable works
of art and trinkets he has acquired on travels.
Not a hint is given of the extra-marital affair that undermines the
author’s domestic life nor of the continuing and increasing tension between the
novelist and the painter nor of Zola’s slip in popularity as his books become
more anti-Catholic. Instead, everyone at
this banquet jokes about Zola’s concern for household drafts, his obsession
with closing windows, a rather heavy-handed foreshadowing of the tragedy to
befall him—unless it was a murder, as some of his supporters suggested and a
few historians believe—when a chimney flue fails during repairs on the house. Then Cézanne announces that he is leaving for
the south and speaks confidently to his host about no longer being comfortable
as his friend, as he feels Emile has abandoned their shared youthful ideals;
Paul suggests that the novelist can no
longer either understand the artist’s poverty nor his commitment to the aesthetic
truth. After Cezanne leaves the house,
Alexandrine Zola and her spouse sit alone in the candlelight to discuss this
break. Zola tries to reassure his wife that
all will be well, that he now has all he wants in terms of worldly goods and
public recognition, and that there are no more private financial worries or public causes to fight for. The conversation, when you are familiar with
the Zolas’ real domestic situation and the author’s slipping artistic career,
seems preposterous. Does it hold water
in terms of the structure of the script and the meaning it is meant to convey
to the American audience? The underlying
theme of Zola’s mixture of self-blindness and arrogance—he is deluded by his
success and fails to understand his friend’s cautions. He obviously requires
some external provocation to restore his moral and artistic insight, something
to disabuse him of the belief in the protection his money, property and
successful career will be enough to fulfil his ambition and calling to be a
radical defender of the Truth and Justice.
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