The Dreyfus Affair
About The Dreyfus Affair
Eleven short scenes restage the Dreyfus case while it was still open. Dreyfus is arrested. He is degraded. He is shown inside the palisade on Devil's Island and then in irons. Colonel Henry kills himself. Dreyfus lands at Quiberon, meets his wife at Rennes, and survives an attempt on his lawyer Labori's life. Reporters fight at the lycée. The court-martial sits. He is led from the lycée back to prison. The staging takes his side: the case is played as a frame.
Cast & crew
More about The Dreyfus Affair
Georges Méliès wrote, directed, and acted, including a turn as Labori. Star Film numbers run from 206 to 217. Each installment is about 20 meters, except the Rennes court-martial, numbered 214–215, at about 40 meters. The series was sold in France, Britain, and the United States under different titles. The French government banned the films in 1915. The ban was lifted in 1950. They were still on sale as late as 1906.
Themes
Background
Alfred Dreyfus's Rennes retrial was underway in 1899. Méliès issued the scenes while the verdict was still news, and he staged them so that Dreyfus reads as innocent.
In film history
The series is the best-known of Méliès's reconstructed actualities. A French ban came in 1915, long after the first sales, and lasted until 1950.
Making
Méliès drops the trick-film style. The rooms are plain, the acting is held down, and the point of each tableau is a public event from that year's papers.
Reviews
Georges Sadoul treated the series as the first politically engaged film. Later accounts of riots at French screenings are recollections. Contemporary proof of an immediate national ban in 1899 is lacking.
Look
Méliès photographs staged rooms in a flat, reportorial way. The landing scene is the exception, with lightning printed in by multiple exposure.
Preservation
Nine of the eleven Star Film installments survive. The degradation scene and Dreyfus leaving the Rennes lycée are lost. France banned the series from 1915 to 1950.
Notes
- Nine of the eleven parts survive. The degradation and the exit from the Rennes lycée are the two missing reels.
- The Quiberon landing uses multiple exposure for lightning and stage machinery for rain and the boat.
- Gun smoke in the attack on Labori was made with rice powder.
- An ironworker was cast because he looked like Dreyfus. Some sets follow news photographs.
- Georges Sadoul later called the series the first politically engaged film.
- Audiences sometimes took the reconstructions for news pictures.
Scenes
- Dreyfus is put in irons inside the Devil's Island cell.
- Colonel Henry's suicide is played as its own scene.
- The court-martial at Rennes, the longest installment, shows Dreyfus before the officers.
