"The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936)

                          (Paul Muni, above, as Louis Pasteur, middle, and as himself, below)

“You young men—doctors and scientists of the future—do not let yourselves be tainted by apparent skepticism nor discouraged by the sadness of certain hours that creep over nations.  Do not become angry at your opponents, for no scientific theory has ever been accepted without opposition…”  Paul Muni as Louis Pasteur

We are over six months into the pandemic.  It will be a little while until things become recognizably normal.  From my relatively safe and simple life, some things are getting easier…or maybe I’m just getting used to some of the changes, for the time being.  Still, like most, I am closely following the progress of scientists as they push to create a vaccine.

There are almost no movies about the drama of discovering vaccines.  In fact, while searching for “Biographical Films About Scientists”, Wikipedia came up with a list of only 33 titles, out of the thousands of movies made over the last century.  There are plenty of movies about diseases and disabilities; but almost none about finding cures. 

I had to go way back to the 1930s to discover such a movie.  “The Story of Louis Pasteur”, released in 1936, is one of the 33 movies on the Wikipedia list.  Made in the old Hollywood system, it combined an entertaining human story with a valuable, simplified history lesson in less than 90 minutes. 

It’s a film about an important historical figure, a pioneer in the discovery of vaccines and the modern process of pasteurization.  It was a major studio film with top-notch production values (excellent direction, rich photography, sumptuous costumes and sets) that featured some of the biggest movie stars of the day.  It was also a big box-office hit, and won three Oscars: two for writing, and one for the performance of the incredible, but now mostly forgotten, Paul Muni.

Movies from the 1930s no longer appeal to many viewers.  Some of the movies are antiquated in subject matter, or worse, reflect attitudes that were accepted at the time but are now offensive.  The style of acting is sometimes forced and melodramatic; and early, primitive technology often created a flat, uninteresting visual experience.  A lot of prints have not been restored, resulting in grainy pictures with fuzzy sound.  (However, the fact that they are in black-and-white, to me, is one of their advantages.)

Not all movies from that era have these drawbacks.  It’s fun to take a chance on the past, and rediscover something that connects with us in a big way.  It’s also enlightening to discover what our ancestors enjoyed on the big screen; a lot of these films hold up extremely well.  “The Story of Louis Pasteur” is well-acted, intelligent and briskly paced, packing in a lot of material during its brief running time.  In spite of its simplicity and the limitations of technology, it is surprisingly relevant, and has a lot to say to us.

The film begins in1860.  Pasteur, a chemist, has already become famous for his process of heating wine to kill harmful microbes (the process known today as pasteurization, used to prevent food-borne illnesses in items like milk and fruit juice).  Pasteur encounters resistance from France’s medical academy, who feel he is unqualified as a “mere” chemist and not a medical doctor.  They deride him for his insistence on surgeons boiling their instruments, and washing their hands, to kill germs that cause the fatal “childbed fever”, an infection in mothers after childbirth.

Pasteur has studied microbes and their correlation to disease. He laments the medical establishment’s “criminal disregard of germs” and their insistence on proof, “as if the dead and dying weren’t proof enough.” 

The film chronicles Pasteur’s work to eradicate anthrax, which infects sheep when they ingest the spores that are rampant in grass.  He injects healthy sheep with a vaccine, and then injects them with blood from infected sheep. The vaccinated sheep survive, and Pasteur’s renown grows.

The movie combines several subplots in a tight script.

Jean Martel, the young assistant to Charbonnet, a rival doctor, starts to work for Pasteur instead, and falls in love with Pasteur’s daughter Annette.  They marry and are expecting a child.  When Annette goes into labor, Pasteur must negotiate with Charbonnet, the only surgeon available for the delivery, who still does not believe in handwashing and surgical hygiene. 

Pasteur finds an advocate in Dr. Joseph Lister, a noted British surgeon who championed the use of antiseptics in surgery.  (The Listerine antiseptic, developed in 1897, is now known as a popular mouthwash.)  After Pasteur partially recovers from a stroke, Lister honors Pasteur in the film’s moving final scene.

Most interesting are scenes showing Pasteur’s struggles with rabies (referred to by the archaic name Hydrophobia).  A good deal of the film’s drama occurs in these scenes.  Even when we know the outcome, the film cleverly builds suspense as Pasteur experiments and tries to convince the medical field once and for all that he is going in the proper direction. Ironically, it is a foolhardy action by his rival Charbonnet that leads Pasteur to solve the rabies vaccine.

Rabies turns out to be a tough study.  Its properties seem to keep changing.  When it doesn’t react like the anthrax vaccine, Pasteur declares that “nature is far too subtle to repeat herself.” When a success is followed by a failure, Pasteur tries to encourage his staff by explaining that “science, like a baby, takes a step, then another, then stops to reflect a while, before taking another.”  Prophetic words, as we wait impatiently for the quick development and availability for a new vaccine.

While the story sounds like a science lesson, this is a true movie-movie, using all of the cinematic skills available at the time to make this an entertaining character study and a suspenseful tale of medical triumph. 

Paul Muni won a Best Actor Oscar in his role as Pasteur.  He was a gifted chameleon of a performer, disappearing into his roles and playing each one convincingly.  Makeup and costumes helped, but Muni always captured the essence of his characters from within, in roles as varied as a notorious mobster (“Scarface”), a petty criminal (“I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang”), a Chinese peasant (“The Good Earth”), and author Emile Zola (“The Life of Emile Zola”, the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1937).

Hollywood may never recapture the knack for portraying scientists in an entertaining cinematic fashion, if and when films go into production again.  If not, it’s good to know that there’s a treasure chest of old films that are worthy of our attention, and are as relevant to the concerns of our day as if they were just made.  I’m glad I took a chance on “The Story of Louis Pasteur.”