Jose Ferrer has directed a relatively inexpensive, black-and-white version of the unjust conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French army at the turn of the century, just before the First World War. It moves quickly, is efficiently staged, and doesn't linger over the maudlin.
Ferrer is pretty good as the well-off, Jewish Dreyfus, a man of honor and head of a loving family. With the help of the Officer Corps and Major Esterhazy -- Anton Walbrook in a marvelous performance among many good performances -- Dreyfus is framed as a German spy and sent to Devil's Island for five years. During those five years, he is not allowed to read any letters, and his captors are forbidden to speak to him. He can't even watch TV.
Finally, through the urgent agency of people like his brother, Mathieu, and the populist novelist Emile Zola, he is brought back and retried. Secret evidence comes to light. Esterhazy publishes his confessions to pay off his gambling debts, Dreyfus is taken back into the army in which he's never lost faith, and promoted to boot. The loving family is restored. The cast consists of just about every notable British supporting actor in the industry at the time.
That "loving family" presents a minor problem, though. It's too loving. There isn't the slightest edge to them, or to any other character. This is no "Lawrence of Arabia," in which the elements are mixed up in anyone. There are "good" people and then there are "bad" people. There is no ambiguity. Not that we need an overdose of ambiguity but some of the parts are overplayed. Viveca Lindfors, with her strong features and exotic eyes, is always wistful, dreamy, and loyal. The presence of her character, and that of Dreyfus' children and brother, are necessary to the plot however, so that we realize Dreyfus is losing more than merely his honor. Beyond that, her probity never fades or is even questioned. And Herbert Lom as the venomously anti-Semitic accuser is over the top. He shouts his lines, sneers, interrupts the already prejudiced court. And at the end, with Dreyfus back where he's always wanted to be, there is happiness without bitterness. It's like Shylock being humiliated in court and forced to convert to Christianity, then shuffling off with a meek, "I am content." Says who?
It's a superior picture, even though I've been picking at it. I would imagine that, for many younger people, the Dreyfus affair will be news to them. Almost anything more than five years old might be. And it's worth retelling for its own provocative sake. Every social group, especially religious ones, have had their history of oppression, even the harmless, peaceable, industrious Mennonites. Christians were fed to lions, Muhammed had his hejira -- but why, oh why, does the West so often turn to the Jews when it needs a victim? It can't be because we are all such devout Christians ourselves. It becomes even more puzzling a question because in Dreyfus' time the European Jews were becoming so assimilated that they were an integral part of the society they lived in -- after millenia of persecution -- what with the House of Rothschild and all that. The lieutenant who awarded Adolf Hitler the Iron Cross was Jewish.
Can it be something as simple as what psychologists call displacement? An angry man is chewed out by his boss, comes home and kicks the dog? Or is it something darker. Maybe human nature needs an enemy, and if it doesn't have one, it invents an imaginary one. Or creates a real one.
Ferrer is pretty good as the well-off, Jewish Dreyfus, a man of honor and head of a loving family. With the help of the Officer Corps and Major Esterhazy -- Anton Walbrook in a marvelous performance among many good performances -- Dreyfus is framed as a German spy and sent to Devil's Island for five years. During those five years, he is not allowed to read any letters, and his captors are forbidden to speak to him. He can't even watch TV.
Finally, through the urgent agency of people like his brother, Mathieu, and the populist novelist Emile Zola, he is brought back and retried. Secret evidence comes to light. Esterhazy publishes his confessions to pay off his gambling debts, Dreyfus is taken back into the army in which he's never lost faith, and promoted to boot. The loving family is restored. The cast consists of just about every notable British supporting actor in the industry at the time.
That "loving family" presents a minor problem, though. It's too loving. There isn't the slightest edge to them, or to any other character. This is no "Lawrence of Arabia," in which the elements are mixed up in anyone. There are "good" people and then there are "bad" people. There is no ambiguity. Not that we need an overdose of ambiguity but some of the parts are overplayed. Viveca Lindfors, with her strong features and exotic eyes, is always wistful, dreamy, and loyal. The presence of her character, and that of Dreyfus' children and brother, are necessary to the plot however, so that we realize Dreyfus is losing more than merely his honor. Beyond that, her probity never fades or is even questioned. And Herbert Lom as the venomously anti-Semitic accuser is over the top. He shouts his lines, sneers, interrupts the already prejudiced court. And at the end, with Dreyfus back where he's always wanted to be, there is happiness without bitterness. It's like Shylock being humiliated in court and forced to convert to Christianity, then shuffling off with a meek, "I am content." Says who?
It's a superior picture, even though I've been picking at it. I would imagine that, for many younger people, the Dreyfus affair will be news to them. Almost anything more than five years old might be. And it's worth retelling for its own provocative sake. Every social group, especially religious ones, have had their history of oppression, even the harmless, peaceable, industrious Mennonites. Christians were fed to lions, Muhammed had his hejira -- but why, oh why, does the West so often turn to the Jews when it needs a victim? It can't be because we are all such devout Christians ourselves. It becomes even more puzzling a question because in Dreyfus' time the European Jews were becoming so assimilated that they were an integral part of the society they lived in -- after millenia of persecution -- what with the House of Rothschild and all that. The lieutenant who awarded Adolf Hitler the Iron Cross was Jewish.
Can it be something as simple as what psychologists call displacement? An angry man is chewed out by his boss, comes home and kicks the dog? Or is it something darker. Maybe human nature needs an enemy, and if it doesn't have one, it invents an imaginary one. Or creates a real one.