A Film about Dreyfus Affair

Abstract

The author analyzes Roman Polański's J’accuse (2019), a film about the Dreyfus affair, carefully examining selected movie scenes and sequences, showing how the director presents and exposes the topic of anti-Semitism, its roots in the military elite and part of the French society at the end of the 19th century. The case of the false accusation and conviction of an innocent officer of Jewish origin was shown in the film as a ominous foreshadowing of the coming century marked by the hecatomb of the Holocaust and earlier by the slaughter of millions of human lives on the fronts of The Great War. Polański's film alludes to both of these historical events. In the article, the author indicates references to other films in Polański's movie, not only those dealing with the Dreyfus affair and the famous article by Emil Zola, entitled J'accuse.