New Picture

I Accuse! (M-G-M). The Dreyfus Affair was a tremendous social and political upheaval that rumbled on long after the legal proceedings (1894-1906) were closed, and in the process almost shattered France's Third Republic. In / Accuse!, the sordid, splendid story is told on the screen for at least the sixth time. Mistakes have been made in the picture: the political repercussions of the affair are scarcely suggested, and the fateful social struggle which it dramatized is fobbed off with some anti-Semitic dialogue and a few shots of screaming headlines and howling mobs. What survives on the screen is no more than a scandal--but then it is a French scandal, and when it comes to making an exquisite mess of things, nobody can come near the nation that invented the galantine de poulet.

Director Jose Ferrer plunges bravely into the mess at the point where Actor Jose Ferrer, who plays the hero, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is sitting at his desk in the Ministere de la Guerre. He is a braid-proud artillery officer assigned to operations and marked with the uncomfortable distinction of being the first Jew ever elevated to the French General Staff. Meanwhile, over at the German embassy, another French officer, one Major Esterhazy, is making arrangements to supplement his army pay with German gold, for which he is ready to betray French military secrets. When one of Esterhazy's treasonable notes is intercepted by French agents, the handwriting is identified by a self-styled expert as that of Captain Dreyfus. When it is pointed out to the expert that the handwriting in the note does not, in fact, resemble that of Dreyfus, he protests indignantly: "Obviously, he disguised it."

On this single piece of evidence, Dreyfus is arrested and charged with espionage. To avoid the scandal of a trial, which would involve a public admission that the General Staff itself had been corrupted by the Germans, the army tries to shame Dreyfus into suicide. He refuses, and the army is forced to convene a court-martial and invent enough evidence to support the charges. Convicted of high treason, Captain Dreyfus is publicly degraded and stripped of rank in the presence of the Minister of War himself, General Mercier, who looks down with cool indifference upon the ruined man, apparently not in the least concerned by new evidence, just handed to him, which proves Esterhazy guilty and Dreyfus innocent. Indifferently, the general turns away. "We must protect the institution," he bristles self-righteously, "even at the expense of the individual." And so Dreyfus is shipped away to Devil's Island, sentenced for life to solitary confinement.

The story of Dreyfus' recall, retrial, re-conviction, and eventual pardon, vindication and restoration to rank forms one of the most dramatic chapters in French history; but it makes the dullest part of this picture. In this part of the real story, the center of interest naturally shifts from Dreyfus to Emile Zola, Anatole France, Georges Clemenceau, Jean Jaures, Maitre Labori and the other famous men who turned the Dreyfus Affair from a case into a cause. If only the camera had shifted with the interest, the picture might have built up an impressive concluding crescendo. Unfortunately, what would interest the moviegoer does not seem to interest the moviemaker--or perhaps the size of the subject frightened him. In any case. Director Ferrer keeps his camera pointed firmly at Actor Ferrer.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.