"The Life Of Emile Zola" (1937) by Henry Blanke

Very interesting old biographical movie that starts very badly,following every Hollywood cliché (young,idealistic and hungry Zola meets a prostitute called Nana,writes a novel about her and suddenly became rich and famous) than turns into high suspense court drama. At first, I was watching it in disbelief, during Zola's hungry years, wondering about deliberate historical mistakes and what would Hollywood make out of my life,for example (Zola was already very successful long before "Nana") than I realized script intentionally glosses over his early years and simplifies everything in order to get to the point & heart of the story, famous Dreyfuss Affair.

Everything that was false and fake in the beginning, suddenly gave place to completely truthful and realistic description of political scandal that was shaking France for twelve years at the end of 19th century - director Henry Blanke went into such details that more I read about real Dreyfuss Affair, more I understand this is exactly how it happened. Dreyfuss arrest, his public arrest, the way officer broke Dreyfuss's sword on his knee before proclaiming him a traitor, the fact that Dreyfuss and his wife were not allowed to talk in private during her visits to jail, his conditions on Devil's Island (legs chained on a bed,living in a stone house,completely isolated from the world), Zola's involvement and the whole public circus around the court, this is exactly how it happened.
I am actually almost sure that Zola was murdered later (it wasn't accidental, his chimney was blocked and forever made me paranoid about open fire).

The movie eventually became so interesting that I almost forgot to notice how much Paul Muni (Zola) changes during the story - he starts as young and skinny dreamer and later turns into happy,grandfatherly type visually very similar to historical Zola - his acting is perhaps hammy occasionally but excellent,its a true "Oscar" worthy role. Joseph Schildkraut (Dreyffus) is so similar to real Dreyfuss that its almost spooky. Because the story has so many judges, lawyers, politicians and army officers, two women's roles are completely pushed in the background, so wives of Zola (Gloria Holden from "Dracula's daughter") and Dreyffus (Gale Sondergaard from "The Letter") are unfortunately purely decorative and have nothing much to say, specially Holden who basically only smiles trough the whole movie.

Excellent court drama that did not need fictional introduction to early Zola - they could simply call the movie "Dreyfuss Affair" and start from there.