The Life of Emile Zola

Have you ever heard of this 1937 biographical film?  Did you know it won the Oscar for best picture and was a box office and critical success?  I hadn't--and now that I've seen it, I know why.

This movie is basically a mess.  All of the people in it need to sign up for Overacting Anonymous, and the director needs to remember that people shouldn't hesitate in their lines when they're supposed to be impetuously interrupted by another actor.

Anyway, here's the summary:  it's the life of famous French writer, Emile Zola.  The film opens with Zola and boyhood friend, Paul Cézanne, living in a crappy apartement and dreaming of being great artistes while espousing the bohemian idéals of truth, beauty, freedom, and love.  Then they meet a prostitute and Zola writes Nana, has great success, but sacrifices it all to write J'Accuse and stand up for justice.

First, the narrative of this movie is incomprehensible and boring.  If I didn't already know about events like the Franco-Prussian War and The Dreyfus Affair, I would have been utterly confuzzled.  Even though it's supposed to be about Zola, we learn really next to nothing about him or his life.  I didn't see his kids in the movie at all, his wife is only mentioned by name once (although she does get a good ten minutes of screen time staring at him devotedly while he rambles on about something-or-other), and his infamous row with Cézanne over The Masterpiece never happens.  Instead, they remain friends.  Like okay?  Even more annoying is that during the whole course of the Dreyfus Affair--which is what this movie is really about--no one once mentions that Dreyfus was Jewish and the whole thing was underpinned by antisemitism.  Nor do they show Zola dying, or mention that he was probably assassinated for political reasons.  Since that's really interesting and dramatic, and would fit into the message the movie appeared to be trying to deliver, I really have to wonder why it was never even alluded to.  If the interwebz hadn't been invented yet, I would have sworn the script writers did all their research by reading wikipedia.

Now for the acting, which is ridonkulous.  By far the most annoying actor in the entire movie was Gale Sondergaard, who played Madame Dreyfus.  She. Was. TERRIBLE!  Like the worst thing I've ever seen in my entire life.  Whenever she came on screen I just had to groan.  Paul Muni was okay--he did manage to look like Zola, although he didn't behave at all the way I imagine Zola would.  He also spent the entire courtroom scene looking like he was either bored or sleeping.  Honestly, I'm pretty sure I saw him with his eyes closed for about ten minutes during cross-examination. 

Surprisingly, the only part of the movie I liked was Vladimir Sokoloff as Paul Cézanne.  Usually I hate Cézanne, but Sokoloff's version of him was pretty awesome.  And his acting was so much better than everyone else's--much more naturalistic and believable.

Overall, I'd say this movie is a big fat skip.  It's neither entertaining nor informative, and I will never get those two hours of my life back.

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Zola: Photographer, by Francois Emile Zola and Massin

ETA:  Emile Zola was a famous French writer in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  Although I'd heard of Zola (it's impossible not to when you study the time period, especially since he hung out with famous artists like Cezanne and Manet), I'd always avoided reading his books because they intimidated me.  But after picking up Nana earlier this month, I found myself fascinated by all things Zola, and checked out several books from library both by and about him.

This book, which is out of print, was a disappointment for me.  Considering the famous people Zola knew, I was expecting pictures of them (especially my boyfriend, Manet).  But most of the book is filled with photographs of Zola, his wife, and their children.  While these portraits were very candid and sweet, I'm not sure they're of much interest to the average person--i.e., myself.

There were a few interesting sections, however, especially photographs Zola took of the Crystal Palace and London (it's startling how different London looks from Paris in the photos), and scenes from the 1899 World's Fair in Paris, when the Eiffel Tower was erected. 

As for the text, there's not that much of it, and what is there isn't exactly gripping or illuminating.  Not that one reads these types of books for the text, mind, but more quotes by Zola himself and context for the photographs wouldn't have been remiss.

One of the weirdest photographs is of Manet's portrait of Zola.  Pictures of pictures always leave me with a sense of irony, but the fact that Zola would do it for some reason just strikes me as bizarre and a little wrong.  It feels oddly funereal to look at:



The death of painting?

And that is what I learned from this book.

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Nana and the Gaze

Nana, Edouard Manet, 1877


I've blogged about the Male Gaze before--today it seems like an intellectual term invented by feminist art historians, but it was an actual thing that existed in the late 19th century.  Men had the power to look, because by looking they owned what they saw, including women.  Women, meanwhile, were supposed to keep their heads down and be demure--but this rule didn't necessarily apply to those women who lived outside the rules of bourgeois society, namely courtesans and prostitutes.

Therefore it's no surprise that Emile Zola's Nana is full of looking--the men who feel free to look at every woman, and appreciate (read: lust over) Nana despite her lack of any discernible talent; the respectable ladies who are really only allowed to consume with their gaze at the Opera or Salons; and the courtesans/actresses who challenge male power by meeting their gaze full on. 

Nothing shows how the gaze equates ownership in Nana so much as some of the first scenes in the theater.  During intermission, the men discuss where they might have seen Nana before--on some street or cafe in Paris.  As readers, we assume that they probably haven't seen her--but by claiming that they have, they assert some ownership over her. 

This may all seem like a horrible objectification of women, and it is; but in Paris, this was the way a young woman could hope to gain wealth and fortune.  As critic Armand Silvestre said in 1888, "every woman who thinks herself beautiful imagines herself Semiramis or Catherine or Fredegonde or simply Olympia. The unfortunate adventure of Nana hasn't discouraged anyone."  Even Nana objectifies herself and her own beauty, owning it by looking at it, "absorbed in enraptured contemplation of herself."

Nana's avaricious gaze extends not just to herself and her audience, but at places--like the races--where any respectable lady would keep her gaze lowered.  Nana instead scans the field with a large pair of binoculars, and looks all the other ladies in the face.  Nana's gaze frightens and seduces men like Moffet, and threatens women like the Comtesse Sabine.

With all this talk about courtesans and looking, it's no wonder that artist Edouard Manet, the king of The Gaze, adored his friend Zola's Nana.  His most famous painting of a courtesan challenging the Male Gaze is Olympia (see the Silvestre quote above); but he also named a painting with similar themes after Zola's heroine.  The model is real-life grande cocotte, Henriette Hauser.  She stands in her underthings, applying make-up before a mirror while a gentleman (holding a cane in his lap--think cigars here, people) watches her in the mirror's reflection.  Nana--or Henriette--meanwhile, looks out at the viewer, the entire focus of the painting, seeming to defy the viewers' presumed right to observe her.  Even though women like Nana--as we see in the book--are seen as little more than sexual snacks, the woman in this painting dares you to objectify her--unless you want to be trapped in your own gaze, as the gentleman on the right seems to be.

Manet's Nana was rejected from the 1877 Salon, not surprisingly; in response, he displayed it in a gallery on the Boulevard des Capucines.  Not only that, but it was hung in a window, where the comely courtesan could gaze freely at every man, woman, and child who passed by on the busy street, thus causing more of a scandal than she probably would have in the Salon.

Even though prostitution was an accepted--desired, actually--part of Parisian society, it one that most of that same society refused to speak of.  Events like the theater, which we see in Nana, and the annual masked ball at the Opera (which Manet also painted) were well-known places where poor girls could hook up with wealthy gentlemen, all while said men-folks' respectable wives, sisters, daughters, and mothers mingled in the crowd.

As for the book, Nana, it's surprisingly enjoyable and readable.  Zola drop-kicks us into the middle of 1870's Paris, and you're suddenly surrounded by men in top hats, women with gigantic skirts, and the rush and insanity and craziness of the Variétés.  Can anything be better for a nineteenth-century geek like myself?  I can't believe it took me this long to try out Zola, and I highly recommend this novel for anyone with a passing interest in nineteenth century art or literature.

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