"[1][2] Produced during the Great Depression and after the Nazi Party had taken power in Germany, the film failed to explore the key issue of antisemitic injustice in France in the late 19th century, when Zola became involved in the Dreyfus affair and worked to gain the officer's release.

Set in the mid through late 19th century, the film depicts Émile Zola's early friendship with Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne and his rise to fame through his prolific writing.

His fiancée Alexandrine procures him a desk clerk job at a bookshop, but he is soon fired after he arouses the ire of his employer and an agent of police with his provocative novel The Confessions of Claude.

Finally, a chance encounter with a street prostitute hiding from a police raid inspires his first bestseller, Nana, an exposé of the steamy underside of Parisian life.

Despite the chief censor's pleading, Zola writes other successful books such as The Downfall, a scathing denunciation of the French commanders' blunders and disunity that led to a disastrous defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

His attorney Maitre Labori does his best against the presiding judge's refusal to allow him to introduce evidence about the Dreyfus affair and the perjury and biased testimony committed by all the military witnesses, except for Picquart.

With the demand for justice reaching a worldwide level, a new French administration finally proclaims that Dreyfus is innocent, and those responsible for the coverup are dismissed or commit suicide.

After his return to Paris, Zola dies of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty stove the night before the public ceremony in which Dreyfus is exonerated and inducted into the Legion of Honor.

Blanke supervised the creation of the final script, which included further contributions by Herald, Herczeg and Raine but also those from star Paul Muni, director William Dieterle and Wallis.

Muni's climactic courtroom speech was filmed in one six-minute take, but Wallis requested that Blanke and Dieterle intersperse the scene with crowd shots.

[3] Following a successful preview screening excluding Max Steiner's musical score, The Life of Emile Zola premiered on August 11, 1937, and became an immediate sensation.

Frank S. Nugent of The New York Times wrote: "Rich, dignified, honest, and strong, it is at once the finest historical film ever made and the greatest screen biography, greater even than The Story of Louis Pasteur with which the Warners squared their conscience last year ... Paul Muni's portrayal of Zola is, without doubt, the best thing he has done.

"[6] Harrison's Reports described it as "A dignified, powerful, and at times stirring historical drama, brilliantly directed, and superbly acted by Paul Muni, as Zola, the great French writer.

"[11] As David Denby writes about the movie in 2013, "At the end, in an outpouring of the progressive rhetoric that was typical of the thirties, Zola makes a grandiloquent speech on behalf of justice and truth and against nationalist war frenzy."

The website's critics consensus reads, "Urgently relevant in an era of escalating bigotry and fascism, The Life of Emile Zola is a respectful and staid tribute to the French novelist, enlivened by Paul Muni's chameleonic prowess.

"[11] Urwand wrote that Jewish studio head Jack L. Warner ordered the word "Jew" to be excised from the script and that Georg Gyssling, the Nazi consul to the United States in Los Angeles, was occasionally allowed to review and provide recommendations on films before they were released, with changes sometimes made based on his comments.