The Life of Emile Zola is a 1937 American biographical film about the 19th-century French author Émile Zola starring Paul Muni and directed by William Dieterle.
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in his renowned newspaper opinion headlined J'Accuse…! Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel prizes in literature in 1901 and 1902.
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The scandal began in December 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent, was wrongfully convicted of treason for communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent overseas to the penal colony on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent the following five years imprisoned in very harsh conditions.
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Alsatian origin and Jewish ethnicity and faith. In 1894, he fell victim to a judicial conspiracy that sparked a major political crisis during the Third Republic, known as the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), when he was wrongfully accused and convicted, due to antisemitism, of being a spy for the German Empire. Upon his arrest, he was sentenced to degradation and deported to the penal colony on Devil's Island to be imprisoned until his death. However, evidence emerged showing that Dreyfus was innocent and that the true culprit was a Catholic officer named Esterhazy. Gradual revelations indicated that the internal investigation conducted by the army was biased; Dreyfus was an ideal scapegoat because he was Jewish, and the army's high command was aware of his innocence but preferred to cover up the affair and leave him in the penal colony rather than lose face.
La Croix is a daily French general-interest Catholic newspaper. It is published in Paris and distributed throughout France, with a circulation of 91,000 as of 2020.
A letter to the editor (LTE) is a letter sent to a publication about an issue of concern to the reader. Usually, such letters are intended for publication. In many publications, letters to the editor may be sent either through conventional mail or electronic mail.
Arthur Ranc was a French left-wing politician, journalist and writer.
Ioannis (Yiannis) Psycharis was a Russian-born philologist who was much of his life a national of France. He was of Greek descent. He was also a writer and a promoter of Demotic Greek.
J'Accuse…! is an 1898 open letter by Émile Zola concerning the Dreyfus affair.
Prisoner of Honor is a 1991 British made-for-television drama film directed by Ken Russell and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Oliver Reed and Peter Firth. It was made by Warner Bros. Television and distributed by HBO, and centers on the famous Dreyfus Affair. Richard Dreyfuss co-produced the film with Judith James, from a screenplay by Ron Hutchinson.
"J'Accuse...!" is an open letter, written by Émile Zola in response to the events of the Dreyfus affair, that was published on 13 January 1898 in the newspaper L'Aurore. Zola addressed the President of France, Félix Faure, and accused his government of antisemitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Army General Staff officer who was sentenced to lifelong penal servitude for espionage. Zola pointed out judicial errors and lack of serious evidence. The letter was printed on the front page of the newspaper, and caused a stir in France and abroad. Zola was prosecuted for libel and found guilty on 23 February 1898. To avoid imprisonment, he fled to England, returning home in June 1899.
Events from the year 1898 in France.
Jean-Baptiste Billot was a French general and politician.
Sir Edmund John Monson, 1st Baronet,, misspelled in some sources as Edward Monson, was a British diplomat who was minister or ambassador to several countries.
Charles Armand Auguste Ferdinand Mercier du Paty de Clam was a French army officer, an amateur graphologist, and a key figure in the Dreyfus affair.
Lucie Dreyfus-Hadamard was the wife of Alfred Dreyfus.
Auguste Mercier was a French general and Minister of War at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.
Auguste Scheurer-Kestner was a chemist, industrialist, a Protestant and an Alsatian politician. He was the uncle by marriage of the wife of Jules Ferry.
George Gabriel de Pellieux was a French army officer who was best known for ignoring evidence during the Dreyfus affair, a scandal in which a Jewish officer was convicted of treason on the basis of a forgery.
An Officer and a Spy is a 2019 historical drama film directed by Roman Polanski about the Dreyfus affair, with a screenplay by Polanski and Robert Harris based on Harris's 2013 novel of the same name. The name J'accuse has its origins in Émile Zola's article in l'Aurore in January 1898 in which the famous author accused many people of France of continuing to support the increasingly blatantly erroneous accusations against Dreyfus.
