(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by the end of today!!!!!  Will she make it?  Keep following the site to find out!)

OH MY GOD, LOUIS PASTEUR WAS THE DEVIL!

Okay, maybe not but that’s certainly the impression that you might get from looking at the one sheet for the 1936 film, The Story of Louis Pasteur.  Seriously, Louis looks quite sinister!

As the movie starts, that’s certainly the view of the 19th century French medical establishment.  A doctor has been murdered by a grieving husband and it’s believed that the murder was inspired by one of Pasteur’s incendiary flyers.  What does the flyer demand?  That doctors should wash their hands and sterilize their instruments before operating.

That’s right!  Washing your hands before plunging them into a human body was once considered to be a controversial notion.  Pasteur is put on trial, accused of inciting violence with his quackery.  Even though Pasteur is acquitted, he finds himself a pariah.  The autocratic and close-minded Dr. Charbonnet (Fritz Leiber) declares Pasteur to be guilty of great quackery and even the ducks are offended.  That’s how hated Pasteur has become.

But, of course, we the audience know that Pasteur is not a quack.  Not only do we know that he is responsible for discovering the process of pasteurization but he’s also apparently important enough to have his own 1930s Warner Bros. biopic.  And he’s played by Paul Muni, who made a career out of playing great men in 1930s biopics.

The film follows Pasteur as he discovers cures for anthrax and rabies.  Along the way, he yells at a lot of people and he gives a lot of speeches.  This film might as well have been called The Paul Muni Show and … well, his performance is okay.  It’s not great.  If you’ve seen the very first version of Scarface, you know that Paul Muni was capable of giving a far better performance than he gives here.  But then again, as written, all Louis does is bellow against everyone who disagrees with him.  (And cure rabies, we shouldn’t overlook that.)

The Story of Louis Pasteur is one of those old-fashioned biopics that feels a bit creaky and stiff today.  As I watched it, I kept thinking that it felt like something you might across on PBS at three in the morning.  However, 1936 audiences disagreed with me.  The Story of Louis Pasteur did quite well at the box office and was nominated for best picture, though it lost to another biopic, The Great Ziegfeld.