Kicking off then with Disraeli which features an Oscar Winning Performance from George Arliss as the man himself. The film concerns itself with the period in Disraeli's life where he tries to build the British Empire and purchase the Suez Canal, however at the time his rival William Gladstone is big news. Gladston
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has a lot more supporters than Disraeli including the head of the Bank
of England. As the movie goes on the Russians implant spies in
Disraeli's office so they can check on his plans to buy the Canal. As
the Suez Canal goes up for sale Disraeli makes a deal with a banker to
come up with the funds however the spies infiltrate the banker's firm
and declare him bankrupt. Disraeli eventually convinces the head of the
Bank of England to give the banker unlimited credit. At the end of the
film Disraeli's female companion is awfully ill but he has to leave her
in order to see Queen Victoria become Empress of India, but suddenly
his lady friend turns up and the film ends happily. In terms of an early
biopic Disraeli was admirable enough. George Arliss' performance was
very worthy and he carried an air of dignity throughout the film. He
portrayed a Disraeli who was very wise and thoughtful and also kind to
those around him. But at the same time I struggle to remember anyone
else in the film apart from the uppity lady spy but that's because it
seemed so far-fetched. I don't think I can be too critical of this film
as it did seem to be quite a large undertaking at atime when films
were still getting used to sound. However I think if a film made about
Disreali's life was made today it would be a lot more professional than
this.Next up is Viva Villa a film about freedom fighter Pancho Villa a Mexican who was fed up with the tyrannical rule of Spanish governors so decided to rise up against them. The film starts with Pancho avenging the death of his father at the hands of one of the generals. Soon Pancho becomes an outlaw attacking willy nilly when and where he sees fit. However his exploits are soon documented b
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a newspaper man called Johnny who strikes up a sort of friendship with
Pancho. The newspaper articles catch the eye of General Madero a
visionary who wants to end the Spanish rule and tries to convince Pancho
to change his ways and instead of killing people who can't defend
themselves to just attack people for further victory. Pancho changes his
ways and soon becomes a legitimate general but he gets restless and
soon becomes an outlaw once again after he steals. Instead of having him
killed Madero simply exiles his friend but when Madero is betrayed and
killed by one of his own men, Pancho mounts a massive attack on
basically everyone until he becomes head honcho, this time though
without changing his beliefs. I found Viva Villa to be more of an
actioner than a biopic although I'm guessing some of the major plot
points are accurate overall the style was incredibly toned towards Villa
just killing anyone that got in his path. The storytelling was very
sloppy with a lot of the history written up on the screen instead of
conveyed through the narrative although the sound and cinematography was
all very good and the former even won an Oscar. Overall though I found
Wallace Beery's performance tiresome, Beery's rough and ready approach
worked in The Champ but here it just seems like a caracture. I think
if they wanted to do a proper dramatic retelling of Pancho Villa's life
then they would've got in someone like Paul Muni.Speaking of Muni, he's popping up once again in the final of this triple bill of biopics playing Emile Zola in the predictably titled The Life of Emile Zola which won the Best Picture prize at the 1938 ceremony. The film is basically an overview of Zola's career starting with his early days being a poor author living with the Spanish pa
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Cezzane. Both men then hit it big, with Zola writing Nana the book that
launched him and caught the eye of both readers and the authorities who
didn't agree with some of his ideals and saw him as being very
controversial. After the film deals with Zola's antics it forwards a few
years and explores his involvement with Alfred Dreyfus the French
Captain who was wrongly accused of supplying military secrets to the
German army. Dreyfus' wife appealed to Zola's better nature and revealed
that another major had found evidence of who the real culprit was. Zola
then wrote an open-letter in the French newspapers with the phrase -
J'Accuse which is famous to this day. The Dreyfus case re-opened with
opinion split between those who chose to support the army fully and
those who thought they had too much power. Eventually there was not
enough evidence to release Dreyfus and Zola was also sentenced to months
in prison for libel. Zola absconded to lie-low in London but his time
in London is depicted as being a particularly low point, but thankfully a
new war commission sought the truth and released Dreyfus which allowed
Zola to return to France. However the day of the celebrations of
Dreyfus' release, the news of Zola's death from radiation poisoning is
displayed on the front of a paper so the ending was bitter-sweet. As
always Paul Muni gives a stunning performance, for which he was Oscar
nominated but lost, much better than in Louis Pasteur but not as good as
in Chain Gang. He is ably supported by Joseph Schildkraut as the
sympathetic and doomed Dreyfus and by Gloria Holden as Mrs Zola. This
is certainly a paint-by-numbers biopic which has a lot of gravitas but
is pretty slow in some points wanting to paint a good picture of the
events but doing so without making a lot of edits where need be. At the
end of the day though this is still fairly powerful stuff and some of
the trial scenes will stick with you after you've watched the film. It
possibly just scraped through with a win that year as the other nominees
weren't a particularly inspired bunch and certainly not as much of an
Oscar winner as this was. However I suspect had it been another year the
film wouldn't have done quite as well as it did.
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