
He simply stepped aside and allowed this change to happen. "His evolution from anti-Semite to defender of Dreyfus was so interesting to me. What interested me most was the concept of the imperfect hero." Dreyfuss wanted to play Col. While what he endured was pretty horrifying, the cultural and political drama occurred without him. He was on Devil's Island the entire time.

The Dreyfus Affair was so much a part of what became my political viewpoint, it was too good to deny." ĭreyfuss had been asked to play Dreyfus but "Dreyfus is an offstage character in his own story. But it doesn't matter, because I created the kinship in my mind as a kid. "My family is of two minds about kinship.

"I've been aware of it because of my name my whole life," said Dreyfus.
#Alfred dreyfus movie tv#
It was the actor's first TV appearance since Victory at Entebbe. He was unable to get the studios interested - "When you go to a studio, what they need for their agenda that year usually is not a film about the French Army in 1894," he said - but succeeded in setting up the film at HBO. He was an admirer of The Life of Emile Zola and J'accuse!.
#Alfred dreyfus movie movie#
The movie was a passion project for Dreyfuss who had wanted to make it since he was a teenager. Richard Dreyfuss stated in an interview that at one time, and before making Prisoner of Honour, he thought he was related by blood to Captain Alfred Dreyfus. His attempt to right the wrong sees his military career ended and the famous French author, Émile Zola (Martin Friend), found guilty of libel for publishing his 1898 open letter J'Accuse…!. Instead, he discovers that Dreyfus (Kenneth Colley), a Jew, was merely a convenient scapegoat for the actions of the true culprit, a member of the French General staff. Colonel Georges Picquart (Richard Dreyfuss) is given the job of justifying Dreyfus' sentence. The film documents the events that saw a French Captain, Alfred Dreyfus, sent to Devil's Island for espionage near the end of the 19th century. Richard Dreyfuss co-produced the film with Judith James, from a screenplay by Ron Hutchinson. Television and distributed by HBO, and centers on the famous Dreyfus Affair. A few years later, Edwin Stanton Porter fascinated and inspired by these insights, will create the first narrative film in movie history, adapted from a real robbery, which became one of the first Western movie ever: The Great Train Robbery.Prisoner of Honor is a 1991 British made-for-television drama film directed by Ken Russell and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Oliver Reed and Peter Firth.

#Alfred dreyfus movie series#
Melies had a brilliant idea: groped to compose an complex story, based on true events, using a series of reels connected by the same narrative meaning. This series of shorts, in fact, differs greatly from previous productions of Melies, definitely fantasy, with theatrical and highly imaginative impact. Melies took, to play the role of Dreyfus, an ironworker with a strong resemblance to Dreyfus, in order to make the film more realistic. The series is divided into 11 chapters lasting about 1-2 minutes each, for a total length of 13 minutes per 240 meters of film: at the time an enormity. Also, it was certainly the first film series ever created until that moment. The Dreyfus Affair series, will be remembered for being the first political film in movie history, surpassing even, another great Melies success of the same genre: The Coronation of Edward VII. At the end of the process, he was declared totally innocent.Īt the time, those events had a powerful media resonance, so that French public opinion was divided in dreyfusards, who believed in the innocence of Dreyfus, and anti-dreyfusards, who instead believed in his guilty. The Dreyfus Affair is a series of short films shot by Georges Méliès in 1899 and inspired by the events, actually happened (and at the time of the series, still ongoing), in the historical event that is remembered as Dreyfus Affair, a political and social conflict that lasted from 1894 to 1906, in which the captain of Jewish origins, Alfred Dreyfus, was accused of treason, on suspicion of being a spy for Germany.
