Dreyfus

DREYFUS recounts the arrest and conviction of this French general staff officer for treason, his late pardon in the 1890s and his even slower rehabilitation. “The title role represents the leading part only by its name. Indeed, this splendidly cast period film has given the more rewarding parts to Heinrich George as Zola, Albert Bassermann as Colonel Picquart and Oskar Homolka as Major Walsin-Esterhazy, who is actually the truly guilty one. Kortner lends the Jewish officer a quiet dignity, though without glamour; for this very reason, he remains true to the historic wisdom that the one degraded to be at the mercy of the powerful was a victim without any options to act on his own.” (Christoph Brecht)