Roman Polanski’s Take on the Dreyfus Affair, ‘An Officer and a Spy,’ Finally Arrives in America

Roman Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy” proves timely even though it has just made it to these shores six years after its European release. Mr. Polanski and his co-screenwriter, the novelist Robert Harris, couldn’t have foreseen the pogrom effectuated by Hamas against the Israeli people on October 7, 2023, or the antisemitism that concomitantly came to the fore, particularly among our educated classes. Yet given their deep dive into the story of Alfred Dreyfus and, with it, mob prejudice, Messrs. Polanski and Harris were likely not altogether shocked by the recent efflorescence of the “oldest hatred.”

Mr. Polanski cites the Dreyfus Affair as a historical marker to which many people nod even as they come up short on its details and consequences. The film begins with an intertitle attesting to the veracity of the events to follow — an avowal that should, given the inherent mutability of filmmaking, be taken with a grain of salt. All the same, “An Officer and a Spy” serves as a reminder, pace William Faulkner, “that the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The past has been dogging Mr. Polanski. The lag between the completion of “An Officer and a Spy” and its American premiere owes to the director’s outlaw status. Mr. Polanski fled the United States in 1978, fearing jail time after accepting a plea bargain for the charge of unlawful sexual act with a minor. He has subsequently been ostracized by a significant swath of the film community and dogged by legal travails. The 50-year-old case was settled out of court in October of last year. Could this agreement have led to the movie seeing the light of day stateside?

“An Officer and a Spy” arrives with a slew of awards in tow, including the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and Best Adaptation, Best Costume Design, and Best Director from the French equivalent of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma. The picture has been met with huzzahs in Poland, Portugal, Turkey, and China, where it was featured at the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival. At the box office, however, the movie has fizzled. Profit-taking and aesthetic merit aren’t always mutually commensurate.

You’d think Mr. Polanski might be humbled by the course of his life, but he’s proven himself a blunderer when reading the zeitgeist. Comparing his own journey to that of Dreyfus, in however allusive a manner, is more effective as a means of shooting oneself in the foot than in advocating for your latest picture. Still, ill-advised promotional guff shouldn’t stand in the way of noting that “An Officer and a Spy” is a remarkable film. Will it give pause to those who have a difficult time separating an individual’s failings from the quality of his work?

Messrs. Polanski and Harris, whose 2013 book of the same name is the basis for the film, approach the Dreyfus Affair by following on the heels of its aftermath. The Jewish army officer who was falsely accused of treason, portrayed here by Louis Garrel, is, for the most part, at the periphery of “An Office and a Spy.” The same is true for another notable figure who became involved in Dreyfus’s cause, the novelist Emile Zola (André Marcon). Although the author’s letter in support of Dreyfus, the famed tract titled “J’Accuse,” figures into the plot, Zola is a minor player. Who, then, is the prime mover of Mr. Polanski’s picture? 

Lieutenant Colonel Marie-Georges Picquart (Jean Dujardin, Oscar-winner as Best Actor for “The Artist” (2011)) is a dedicated soldier who was Dreyfus’s instructor at military school and is, as he is the first to admit, no great admirer of Jews. When he’s made director of counterintelligence services, Picquart inherits an agency whose mustiness of surroundings is matched by the jadedness of its personnel. His second in command, Colonel Henry (Gregory Gadebois), is openly resentful, slovenly, and cynical. The other men in the French secret services are squirrelly, cloistered, and suspicious of the new man in charge.

When information reaches Picquart’s desk about a current breach of national security, he pursues the case with an initiative that has long been absent from the administration. Among the incriminating items in his possession is a batch of letters written by an officer in the French army, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy (Laurent Natrella). The penmanship strikes a chord with Picquart, being similar to the writing found in the bordereau, the document divulging state secrets that was the primary piece of evidence in the Dreyfus conviction. The good soldier realizes that an injustice has been done and sets out to do right by his former student.

“An Officer and a Spy” moves fluidly between historical drama, detective yarn, and police procedural, with an oddment of a love story being a welcome eddy within its flow. Although the narrative is sometimes uncomfortably cropped for the sake of factual verisimilitude, Mr. Polanski’s grip on cinematic convention is immediately and consistently gripping.  

Jean Rabasse’s production design is astonishing, as is the cinematography of Pawel Edelman, who navigates the documentary and the romantic with exacting precision. The actors are all top notch — a good bunch of them were drafted from the Comédie Française — but Mr. Dujardin carries the film with a firm-jawed sense of purpose. 

Whatever your qualms might be upon entering the theater, you will likely leave an “Officer and a Spy” convinced that history has been honored and cinematic verities fully realized.