https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2939232.html

I found it very interesting, particularly as I have just read a book about Ulysses, to see the connection between Zola's radical political activity and beliefs, and (what was more important to him) his breaking the conventions of novel-writing. I may even try some of his books some day - Germinal, Nana, Thérèse Raquin And his autobiographical first novel La confession de Claude all sound promising.

A lot of what's in the film is invented - the quarrel with Cézanne didn't really happen like that, Nana was not his first successful novel (not even his first successful novel about Nana), he was not dragged into the Dreyfus case by the tears of Lucie Dreyfus, he wasn't offered membership of the Academy in 1897 (but kept begging for it), he died in his bedroom with his wife rather than alone in his study, and Dreyfus was not exonerated until several years after Zola’s death. These are necessary edits of the truth to make a good movie, I suppose. On the other hand, the real-life attempted assassination of Dreyfus in 1908, while he was attending the ceremony of Zola's interment in the Pantheon, is a dramatic end to the book that is skipped in the film. The anti-Semitism inherent to the Dreyfus case is made absolutely clear, though I’m sure that the full facts will have been even worse.

The part of Zola's life almost completely omitted from the film is of course his love-life. As a student in a garret in his late teens and early twenties, he lived with an unnamed girlfriend who then drops out of the narrative completely. (Wikipedia quotes Henri Mitterand to the effect that her first name was Berthe.) As well as his wife Alexandrine (with whom he had no children), he had a long-term lover, Jeanne Rozerot, who bore him a son and a daughter. When he died he left all of his estate to his wife and nothing to his children or their mother. (I'm glad to say that his widow acknowledged and adopted the children, who in turn adopted the surname Emile-Zola.) Josephson conveys this as part of Zola's general passion for life in general, and is rather critical of his wife for being too dramatic about the situation. I think Josephson could have found a bit more sympathy for Alexandrine, and Zola's treatment of his children does not speak well of him.

It's rather an old-fashioned biography, but a cracking good read, and it's particularly impressive the Josephson was able to boil down vast amounts of archival research in French for an American audience. It's also copiously illustrated with cartoons and copies of manuscripts. ( )