The
next part of the 1937 “Life of Emile Zola” takes a new direction from this
point on, though it has slightly been hinted at before. The Dreyfus Affair moves towards the centre
of interest, and Zola’s heroic role will be presented as the crowning glory of
the novelist’s career. The Affair also
exposes the same forces at work in France of the 1890s as threaten the
world—Europe and America—in the late 1930s: the rise of militaristic
dictatorships, the weakness and confusion of supposedly democratic governments,
and thus the need for a hero: not a military leader or a charismatic
politician, but a dedicated artist, an ordinary man who risks all for the sake
of his ideals. But in shaping the motion
picture in this way as a hopeful warning for the audience, do the Hollywood
Moguls allow enough real truth to show through to be effective? Do they not, one may well ask, undercut their
own intentions by showing a version of Alfred Dreyfus and his wife’s ordeal
that is so vitiated that the film does more harm than good?
Scene 16
In this scene,
the real villain of the Affair, Count Esterhazy is shown writing the bordereau,
the memorandum in which he offers to sell French state secrets to the enemy,
the crime Dreyfus will be accused of committing. Dressed in civilian clothes to deliver the note
to the military attaché Schwartzkopfen at the German Embassy. Though not a
total surprise to audiences, unless they are so ignorant of Zola’s career and
recent history as to be at a loss as to what is going on, the beginning of the
Dreyfus Affair proves to be the major event in the entire film. Ironically this re-structuring of the film is
closer to the facts than the screen writers probably knew. In the long run, in
the perspective of subsequent history, Zola’s role has been overly lauded, in
the same way as Dreyfus’s character and the loyalty of his family have been
marginalized or even totally ignored: yet what Zola and the other Dreyf usts
did was not eventually overridden by the Holocaust, whereas the integrity,
bravery and love between Alfred and Lucie Dreyfus continue to be models of how
to confront adversity.
Scene 17
Esterhazy next
is seen entering the Germany Embassy. Because
his contact Schwarzkopfen is not in, the traitor leaves his note, the bordereau which an usher deposits in the
attaché’s pigeon hole. A elderly
cleaning woman who works for the French secret service takes it away to bring
to a covert rendezvous with French intelligence officers. Again the scene is historically true and
contains some accurate details, although there is no context to these actions,
wither in terms of political tensions between France and Germany or of the
corrupt and mendacious personality of Esterhazy and his connections with other
young officers in the Army, including the Intelligence section.
Scene 18
Set in Military Intelligence
offices in Paris, a group of uniformed men receive the borderau delivered
by the usual means. They are shocked
at its contents, show it up the chain of
command, all the while becoming more and more angry and worried about a spy in
their midst. Investigation is cursory
and superficial, however. Though the
real event covered many months, the film shows all this in a few moments. The investigators look in the register of
officers in the Intelligence Section for someone with artillery training, as
though that were the only determining point in finding the culprit. Few likely names turn up, but they see only one
of real interest, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, “Religion: Jew”.[i] That
decides the issue for them They then decide
to entrap him. This is the one time in
the entire film that there is a mention of Dreyfus as a Jew, the apparent three
other occasions have been cut under pressures from above and with a fear of
offending the Nazi government and so losing distribution rights in
Germany. This may also have something to
do with the leftwing ideology of the film-makers who know that the American
audience is not yet mature enough to handle a theme of anti-Semitism. Artistically, the absence of any clear
identification of Dreyfus and the thematic shift of focus from in the depiction
of the Affair from Dreyfus to Zola, show that historical accuracy is almost the
last thing in the director’s mind. It
may be commendable for the motion picture to aim at awakening fears in the
audience’s mind about an imminent second world war, but to avoid the issue of
anti-Semitism as one of the determining causes is dangerous, as is the failure
to see how the plot against Dreyfus proceeds through ther same Judeophobia.
Scene 19
Dreyfus at home
with his family, this is surely the most sympathetic scene in the film. Domestic scene of Lucie and children playing
war games with Alfred presents him as a likable Frenchman. When a message comes from War Office
requesting Alfred report the next morning in civilian dress, he tells Lucie not
to worry. Mostly fiction, with the
husband and wife older than they actually were, as well as the children who
were actually under five years old, puts everything in a different light than
the truth of their situation. Nothing at
all suggests this is a Jewish home, even if rather assimilated. Though Alfred
may have thought of himself as being separate from his ancestral religion, none
of his fellow officers could forget that he was Jewish; and they took his stiff
and cautious demeanor as proof of his traditional Jewish arrogance and
pride. As for Lucie, as the daughter of
a rich diamond merchant and brought up among cultured relatives and friends,
most of whom were Jewish and more traditional ion their practices than the
Dreyfus family, she was not the typical bourgeois wife found in late
nineteenth-century novels and plays.
Fopr both husband and wife, this moment was anything but normal, and
from then on both of them found their lives turned upside down and so
disturbing that they could never accept the world on its own terms again.
Scene 20
The new scene is
set the next morning in the HQ of the High Command. As Dreyfus arrives in civilian clothes,
Esterhazy is finishing a meeting with Col. Henry—the future forger of
incriminating documents against Dreyfus--and walks out, passing Alfred in the
corridor. Nothing like this ever
happened. But it does make for good
drama. Neither recognize each
other. Then Henry and other officers set
trap for Dreyfus. “Tell him to take
dictation,” Henry directs his fellow officers; and within seconds, after Alfred
nervously shakes in trying to write, he is put under arrest, convicted by his
handwriting. When Dreyfus tries to laugh
off the question on why his hand is shaking, they say, “Keep your jokes to
yourself.” Dreyfus defies the
accusation. He has no idea of what the
charges against him are. He is taken
away by waiting military police. The juxtaposition of Dreyfus and Esterhazy is based
on a great deal of artistic liberty with the real events. There is, however, a possible hint of
Dreyfus’s Jewishness in his joke that the arrogant officer silences. The only crime actually committed by Alfred
has been his Jewish identity, something which in the racial ideology of current
anti-Semitism makes him guilty: a Jew can never be trusted and is
constitutionally disloyal.
Scene 21
The focus shifts
back to the Dreyfus home. Lucie and the
children playing. There is a menacing knock
on the door. Col. Henry enters and
pushes his way past the maidservant.
Lucie sends children away and is coldly told that Alfred has been
arrested and therefore the house will be
searched. Defiantly, Lucie says he can
search all he wants and Alfred is innocent.
She says Alfred has given “twenty years service to his country.” She remains defiant. This is, in the long
run, accurate, a faithful picture of a strong-willed Jewish wife who has no
doubts of her husband’s integrity. But in specific details the scene is not
historical at all. In the records, we
can see that Col. Henry intimidated Lucie, warned her that if she disclosed his
arrest to anyone—and he tells her husband is a traitor and a spy—she will never
see him again. Lucie, at the age of 23 or 24 is frightened. Interestingly, however, in this film Lucie
starts to come across at once as strong and articulate. The real dangers are muted, and the rest of
the Dreyfus clan, most of whom are still in Alsace (except for his older sister
Hettie Valabregue who lives in the south of France) and the Hadamard family who
will offer her and the children a refuge in their apartment in Paris disappear
from the events.
Scene 22
Then the
technique of printed newspaper headlines across the screen: Dreyfus Guilty. The months between Alfred’s arrest,
imprisonment, and eventual first court martial in 1894 are completely elided.
The scene opens with Emile Zola and his wife Alexandrine on the way to the
market while newsboys shout the text.
The couple pay no attention to the newspaper headlines. In reality, of course, Emile at this time was
in Italy busy gathering background for on his next novel, the second of his Three Cities trilogy, called Rome.
But in this concocted scene, while the husband and wife discuss buying
lobsters, a carriage passes with some of Zola’s close friends, Clemenceau,
Anatole France and Schuerer-Kastner who speak of concerns over arrest of
Dreyfus. Again this is a fabrication,
justifiable only by reason of needing to condense and foreshadow later stages
of the Affair when these associates react to the series of false documents,
disregard for real evidence of Dreyfus’s innocence, and years of campaigning by
Lucie and her brother-in-law Mathieu Dreyfus.
It will therefore actually take several years before Zola comes to pay
any attention to the Dreyfus case and more time before he discusses it with
these other men. At this fictional
moment, though, Zola dismisses the affair as unimportant because the movie
directors seem to want to show him still in a state of self-blindness, just as
Cezanne had pointed out before. While
the Anti-Dreyfus mob with signs against the officer pass by, none of the
placards carrying any of the usual slogans such as “Down with Dreyfus the Jew”
and “Death to the Jews”, Zola and a fishmonger discuss lobsters. The saleswoman, hearing the cries, says, “The
state of France does not make mistakes,” as she tips down the scale with the
lobsters the author is purchasing.
If you know the
real story and who the historical characters are, there is a rich texture of
allusions. If not, most of this scene
would be impenetrable. It also comes to
focus on the symbolic discussion and purchase of the lobsters: the corruption
of the Republican is rife at all levels, from the peddlers in the street
through to the Army and the Government. Most
people, including most Jews at the time, could not believe that a panel of
respected military officers could reach a unanimous verdict either on the basis
of false testimonies and forged documents or out of sheer malice. The argument would also run that whether
Dreyfus is innocent or not, the honor of the Army and the glory of France come
first. Zola seems smugly indifferent.
Scene 23
Degradation of
Dreyfus. Military ceremony. Crowds shout “Down with Dreyfus.” Throughout the ceremony, Dreyfus shouts “Long
live France. I am an innocent.” Anatole France seen in the crowd moved by
Dreyfus’s behaviour. The film’s plot reduces Dreyfus’s rage and fear to almost nothingness,
only a very few outside of the immediate family actually caring. The anti-Semitism is deleted, and thereby the
ignorance, superstition and cynicism of the vast majority of Frenchmen and
women. But Dreyfus does come across as brave in asserting his innocence. He
will suffer for five years, much of that time in solitary confinement in exile
on Devil’s Island off the coast of South America.
[i] The actors in the radio play
mention that Dreyfus is a Jew twice to emphasize the point clearly. But it is not referred to again later. Obviously the radio producers were not under
the same intensity of pressure to play down or deny altogether the Jewishness
of the accused officer.
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