This film, made in 1937*, has nothing to do with
l'affaire Dreyfus,
the 1898 court case, although the title does come from the famous letter
written by Emile Zola in defense of Albert Dreyfus. I saw a bad, or
maybe just an old print of it projected recently. My friend and I got
restless near the end. It seemed too long and drawn out.
However, our many anti-war fellow-citizens may be interested in this early
example of opposition to war after The War to End All Wars, WW I.
Also, there are few people alive today who remember that bloody conflict.
"J'Accuse" may serve to describe it for the rest of us. The plot
begins near the end of the war, and was one of the first to use actual film
footage of the fighting. A tight-knit group of men is sent out on a
dangerous patrol. Only one returns. As the bodies are being
retrieved, an armistice is announced. (I will leave out the various
romantic relationships.) Jean, the survivor of the patrol, becomes
obsessed with the war and his dead comrades, and particularly with the
battle of Verdun. As time goes by, he starts to believe that Europe is
once again on the brink of war. At the cemetery where the dead from the
battle of Verdun are buried, he raises the spirits of the dead soldiers, who
march toward a nearby village. This, and his madness antagonize the
inhabitants and they tie him to a plinth, stack brush at his feet, and begin
to burn him alive. In the end the spirits arrive at the plinth, take Jean's
soul as he died, and march back to the cemetery. I suppose the message
from all this is: War is bad.
*The film I saw and some online postings indicate that this film was made in
1919, which makes no sense. For one thing, it's a sound film,
which didn't exist in 1919, and for another, signs of approaching war would
have been obvious in 1937. Hitler had come on the scene by then, too,
so I wonder how Gance could have imagined war would be avoided.
