by Chris Marshall:
One of my favorite aspects of The Oscar Project is that I am
constantly learning and experiencing new things. The first winner I had seen
previously was Casablanca, meaning
the first 15 of these posts are written about movies that were new to me. Some,
like The Life of Emile Zola, I had
only heard of because they were on the list of Best Picture winners. I cannot
otherwise recall a single instance of somebody talking about this film.
But what a revelation it was! It wasn’t the single best I’ve
seen so far, but it’s pretty close, as you’ll see when I post my Best of the
Decade list on May 6. I made the claim in my introductory post that winning an
Oscar automatically puts a film into the canon, but there are exceptions to
every rule, Emile Zola being one.
That is such a pity; this is a movie that deserves to be seen by more people.
It was the second biopic to win the top award, following on
the heels of The Great Ziegfeld. That
film turned into a debacle because it tried to be and do too much. Emile Zola focuses on its primary
subject exclusively, and while it dedicates a brief few moments to his early
life, it zeroes in on a single event, what became known as the Dreyfus Affair.
