A tasteful and thoughtful fictionalization of Louis Pasteur's development of vaccines for anthrax and rabies that nevertheless peddles in the kind of hagiography one would expect from films of this time period, when things like subtlety were in short supply.
"The Story of Louis Pasteur" was a prestige pic from Warner Bros. off-shoot Cosmopolitan, designed to win the studio acclaim and Oscars. It did both, scoring a Best Actor win for Paul Muni, eminently watchable as Pasteur but who deserved to win both three years earlier for his intense performance in the intense "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" and a year later for his performance in another Warner Bros. biopic, "The Life of Emile Zola." Indeed, there is speculation that 1936 saw a lot of vote rigging in the Academy and that Muni's win was the result of some under the table deals among studio execs to ensure that certain actors and certain films would win key awards. But it's the kind of role and performance that could easily have won on its own merits, and indeed biopics have been one of the surest vehicles for actors seeking Oscar noms and wins ever since.
The film also won two writing awards, the first of only four films in Oscar history to do so, when rules allowed both the screenplay and the original story on which it was based to be eligible even if written by the same people, which in this case were (Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney). Its fourth and final nomination was for Best Picture, in a year that found the other nominees in that category to be "Anthony Adverse," "Dodsworth" (my personal favorite), "Libeled Lady," "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," "Romeo and Juliet," "San Francisco," "A Tale of Two Cities," "Three Smart Girls," and that year's winner, "The Great Ziegfeld."
Grade: A-
"The Story of Louis Pasteur" was a prestige pic from Warner Bros. off-shoot Cosmopolitan, designed to win the studio acclaim and Oscars. It did both, scoring a Best Actor win for Paul Muni, eminently watchable as Pasteur but who deserved to win both three years earlier for his intense performance in the intense "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" and a year later for his performance in another Warner Bros. biopic, "The Life of Emile Zola." Indeed, there is speculation that 1936 saw a lot of vote rigging in the Academy and that Muni's win was the result of some under the table deals among studio execs to ensure that certain actors and certain films would win key awards. But it's the kind of role and performance that could easily have won on its own merits, and indeed biopics have been one of the surest vehicles for actors seeking Oscar noms and wins ever since.
The film also won two writing awards, the first of only four films in Oscar history to do so, when rules allowed both the screenplay and the original story on which it was based to be eligible even if written by the same people, which in this case were (Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney). Its fourth and final nomination was for Best Picture, in a year that found the other nominees in that category to be "Anthony Adverse," "Dodsworth" (my personal favorite), "Libeled Lady," "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," "Romeo and Juliet," "San Francisco," "A Tale of Two Cities," "Three Smart Girls," and that year's winner, "The Great Ziegfeld."
Grade: A-