It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to prove to an unwilling audience that they are wrong in the way they see things. Sometimes no matter how much evidence you can muster up it won’t change their minds. Even in the 21st century we still live in a world where some people believe that if you can’t see it then it doesn’t exist, or that believe the world is flat or that vaccines are nothing more than a government conspiracy to place trackers in their bodies and monitor everything they say and do.
The world Louis Pasteur grew up in was equally as skeptical as the modern one. Doctors refused to believe things like microbes were killing their patients and something as simple as washing their hands could save lives. A lot of people during the Covid pandemic felt the same way. All this shows us is that people throughout the years are a stubborn lot that don’t like their world view challenged. What is truly remarkable about Louis Pasteur is not only that he discovered germs were killing people but how to combat them, too. And not only that, he also managed, after a lot of opposition, to convince people of what he discovered.
In 1860’s Paris chemist Louis Pasteur (Paul Muni) publicizes his theory that microbes cause diseases. He postulates that doctors spread diseases when they don’t wash their hands and sterilize their equipment when treating their patients. One man, whose wife died from puerperal fever after giving birth, murders her doctor after reading Pasteur’s publication. This upsets the medical community who promptly dismiss Pasteur’s findings as mere witchcraft, refusing to take him seriously and holding him morally accountable for the doctor’s murder. The emperor of France comes down against him and he chooses to leave Paris and move to Arbois where he continues his work, this time developing a vaccine against the anthrax plaguing the country’s sheep.
When it is discovered that the sheep in Arbois are not dying from Anthrax a team determines the soil in the area is free of the disease and the government buys up land their inviting sheep farmers to use it. Pasteur objects to this, insisting the land is still full of Anthrax spores. An experiment is proposed: He will vaccinate 25 of the new sheep and keep them isolated from 25 other of the new ones. All fifty will be injected with anthrax and everyone will see what happens. Many prominent physicians show up to see Pasteur exposed for a charlatan only to discover that all the vaccinated sheep are fine while the unvaccinated ones have all died. The celebrations are short lived, though when a man is bitten by a rabid dog and is expected to die. Pasteur makes rabies his next project.
The film follows Pasteur for many years, through the early stages of his work trying to find ways to prevent microbes from spreading and killing people through to his later years when he is finally acknowledged for his discoveries about the microscopic killers. As stated above it is hard to convince a single person, let alone a group of people, that they are wrong in their views of the world. The doctors refuse to acknowledge that anything they are doing, or not doing, is causing their patients to get sick and die. Yet that is exactly what is happening. Beware of stupid people in large groups, George Carlin once said. Yet this isn’t a group of stupid people but educated people who just don’t have the full picture. How frustrating it had to be for Pasteur to know what he knew and have no one in the medical profession believe him.
People sensitive to animal cruelty will have a hard time watching the sheep experiment knowing that these medical professionals injected anthrax laden blood into fifty sheep, believing that it would kill all of them outright. Looking back on it now it’s easy to be judgmental about the methods used to prove the anthrax vaccine was legitimate. Back then it was common practice to experiment on animals without much regard for their wellbeing. Even Pasteur remarks that the doctor shouldn’t inject the disease into them since the common belief of the time was that the disease develops inside the animal’s body and not from external sources. The experiment goes on, though, and 25 lambs die within 48 hours of their injection. Yet how many countless more are saved as a result of this experiment? It convinced many people that his work was indeed valid and paved the way for him to continue his work into vaccinations for other things, saving more than just a few lambs.
His later work into a treatment for rabies comes under scrutiny when setbacks arise when he cannot identify any microbe being transferred from one animal to another. Consequently his attempts to develop a vaccine fail. He further is discredited when his chief skeptic, Dr. Charbonnet, confident that Pasteur is a quack, injects himself with rabies and does not get the disease. This setback turns into a victory when it leads Pasteur to discovering the sample has weakened with age giving him the idea to give the infected dogs progressively stronger doses until they have developed an immunity to the full strength disease.
Paul Muni was considered a chameleon actor, disappearing into his roles. He was excellent as Emil Zola, the writer and activist who risked his reputation and freedom to take up the cause of a wrongfully accused man. He is equally good here as the man who faced hundreds of years worth of belief with his new ideas. His frustrations are palpable and the hills he must traverse to get his views across seem insurmountable. Yet he pressed on and found a way to prove he was right and change the minds of many. Paul depicts this frustration and resolve in a believable way and, later, when Pasteur’s health betrays him, he perfectly portrays those physical struggles, too. He would go on to win the Academy Award for this portrayal.
This is a relatively short film, clocking in at under ninety minutes in length. Yet a lot happens in that short time. So many biographical films feel the need to explore the full life of their subjects from birth to death. It is refreshing to see one that focuses on one specific aspect of the subject’s life, that being Pasteur’s work on microbes and his development of vaccines. We learn very little about the man, himself, here. He’s married but we know next to nothing about how they met or wed. It’s not important to this story and would only serve to pad the runtime. This is the story about how he succeeded in convincing the world of microscopic killers and how to combat them. How he got into that field and how he became obsessed with the subject is immaterial. It makes for a very straight forward story that may not be the most engaging film but still gives us a bit of an insight into how these things came to pass and how it became adopted into the medical field as we know it today. There’s not a whole lot of depth to the movie but it is well worth a watch regardless.
Academy Award Nominations:
Outstanding Production: Henry Blanke
Best Actor: Paul Muni (won)
Best Original Story: Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney (won)
Best Screenplay: Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney (won)
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Release Date: February 22, 1936
Running Time: 87 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Paul Muni, Josephine Hutchinson, Anita Louise and Donald Woods
Directed By: William Dieterle
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