The Story of Louis Pasteur
Directed by William Dieterle
Written by Sheridan Gibney and Pierre Collings
1936/USA
First National Productions
First viewing
[box] Dr. Louis Pasteur: [to his assistants] Remember our aim: Find the microbe – kill the microbe.[/box]
I enjoyed this inspiring biopic and Paul Muni’s perfomance as the French scientist.
Irascible French chemist Louis Pasteur fights for years to have his theory that microbes cause disease accepted by the French medical establishment. His theory helps him to discover a vaccine for anthrax and a cure for rabies.
Despite the dry sounding subject matter, my eyes were wet by the end. It is amazing how helpless medicine was against disease and how vulnerable people were to infection by dirty hands and instruments before Pasteur’s breakthrough (which, admittedly was paralleled by Lister’s work on antiseptic surgery in Britain). Muni absolutely disappears into his character. Recommended.
Muni won an Academy Award for Best Actor, while Collings and Gibney won for Best Screenplay and Best Story. The film was nominated for Best Picture.
Trailer
I think if one would have seen Paul Muni on the street, he wouldn’t be recognized. He seemed to always “be” the character and unlike a lot of stars (Cagney,Robinson, Bogart) he didn’t have any quirks that made you say “oh, there’s Paul Muni”. It takes a special actor to pull that off and although I love all those actors I mentioned above, he actually disappeared as Muni and became Pasteur or Juarez or whatever historical character he was playing.
Maybe his transparency was why he wasn’t a big movie star. I’m looking forward to seeing his Emile Zola in “1937”.