The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)
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The Story of Louis Pasteur Movie Review
The Story of Louis Pasteur is a 1936 biographical picture directed by William Dieterle and starring Paul Muni. It’s such a great story, but not a great movie.
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“Remember our aim:
Find the microbe – kill the microbe“
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The story is of the scientific genius Louis Pasteur who conquered deadly diseases. It is the Russians who realize his genius, and France finally honors him. First and foremost, what this man did was truly revolutionary for the field of microbiology. He is one of the greatest scientists of all time, and certainly one of the most important.
However, that is not to say that his story is filmable in any way because it surely is not. Yes, they loved their biopics in their thirties, and once again they filmed a story not really suitable for the medium of film. That resulted in some great dialogue, but not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s a very short movie that is incredibly rushed in its structure and runtime. At eighty minutes, it flies by for sure, but not in a good way. It consists of important events in this man’s life, but interspersed highly awkwardly, and never at all in an organic manner.
Paul Muni is very good admittedly so. He changed his career path during this period from crime flicks to biopics which obviously led to him getting a lot of love from the biopics-obsessed Academy. And he’s very strong here, believable and delivering his lines naturally.
My problem with his Oscar win is that it came in the year of Gary Cooper and William Powell whose turns in ‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town’ and ‘My Man Godfrey’ were infinitely better, and simply more memorable. The movie was also nominated for Best Picture undeservedly so while it received two screenplay wins which is baffling to me. It makes no sense plus the movie is simply not well written at all.
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The Story of Louis Pasteur is also not impressive technically speaking. Sure enough, it’s competently made and acted across the board, but the direction is pedestrian, the cinematography is nothing to write home about and the other characters are thoroughly bland.
The Story of Louis Pasteur certainly has great dialogue and a very good central performance from Paul Muni. It’s a competently made, but thoroughly unimpressive film with a very awkwardly paced, problematic narrative structure that led to some good moments, but overall a highly uncinematic, bland viewing experience.
