Oscars: Every Best Picture Winner Ever Ranked From Worst To Best
79. The Life Of Emile Zola (1937)
Williem Dieterle's biograhical drama centred on French author Émile Zola (Paul Muni) is only the second-ever biopic to win Best Picture at the Oscars, but it bears all the hallmarks of a genre prototype that's extremely rough around the edges, bloated and overlong even at just 116 minutes in length, and not nearly as interesting as it could be.
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The sanitised script - which elided any explicit references to anti-Semitism or Jews - denies its exploration of the infamous Dreyfuss scandal much true power, and though it tells an important story, it's really quite a boring time capsule remnant of a movie.