L'affaire Dreyfus (1899)

Wissenswertes

The Dreyfus Affair, also known as Dreyfus Court-Martial, is an 1899 series of eleven short silent films by Georges Méliès. Each of the eleven one-minute installments reconstructs an event from the real-life Dreyfus affair, which was still in progress while the series was being made. The series follows the case from Alfred Dreyfus's arrest on suspicion of espionage, through his imprisonments on Devil's Island and in Rennes, to his trial and conviction for treason; related events are also included, including the suicide of a main Dreyfus accuser, an unknown gunman's attempt to murder Dreyfus's attorney, and a public conflict between pro- and anti-Dreyfus factions.

Production

The French public paid intense attention to the Dreyfus affair, with high interest in films relating to the case. One story goes that Francis Doublier, a filmmaker working for the Lumière brothers, went so far in 1898 as to string together unconnected film clips, presenting the melange with a running spoken commentary claiming that he was showing Dreyfus, the courthouse where he was sentenced to Devil's Island, and the ship carrying him there.

Production of Méliès's The Dreyfus Affair began while the real-life Alfred Dreyfus's trial was proceeding in Rennes. The series was made entirely in Méliès's Star Films studio in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, though with a strong emphasis on cinematic realism markedly different from the energetic theatrical style used in Méliès's better-known fantasy films.

An ironworker with a strong resemblance to Dreyfus was hired for the role in order to increase the series's realism. Méliès himself appears in the series as Dreyfus's attorney Fernand Labori and makes a brief reappearance as a journalist after Labori's attempted assassination. At least one scene, Dreyfus's exit from the courthouse, appears to have been modelled on a news photograph printed in the journal L'Illustration.

Taken as a whole, The Dreyfus Affair can be considered Méliès's longest film up to that date, and it has sometimes been described as such. However, the eleven installments were designed to be sold individually, so it is more accurate to refer to The Dreyfus Affair as a series.

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