The Dreyfus Affair (film series)

The Dreyfus Affair
Production still from the fifth installment
Directed by	Georges Méliès
Production company	Star Film Company
Distributed by	Star Film Company Warwick Trading Company
Release date	September 1899 (1899-09)[1]
Running time	240 meters/780 feet total[1] Approx. 13 minutes total[2]
Country	France
Language	Silent

The Dreyfus Affair (French: L'affaire Dreyfus), also known as Dreyfus Court-Martial,^[3] is an 1899 series of eleven short silent films by Georges Méliès. Each of the eleven one-minute installments reconstructs an event from the real-life Dreyfus affair, which was still in progress while the series was being made. The series follows the case from Alfred Dreyfus's arrest on suspicion of espionage, through his imprisonments on Devil's Island and in Rennes, to his trial and conviction for treason; related events are also included, including the suicide of a main Dreyfus accuser, an unknown gunman's attempt to murder Dreyfus's attorney, and a public conflict between pro- and anti-Dreyfus factions. The series was acted in a restrained, realistic style vastly unlike Méliès's better-known fantasy films; the scenes were staged and advertised to suggest accurately that Dreyfus was innocent of espionage and had been framed.

The real-life Dreyfus Affair attracted immense attention both in France and in Britain, and numerous films were made in both countries about the case. Méliès's version was highly publicized, and later recollections and legends claim that it caused considerable interest and controversy at the time. It remains the most famous example of Méliès's staged reconstructions of current events ("reconstructed actualities"), and nine of the eleven installments are known with certainty to survive.