Best movies like The Life of Emile Zola

He'll hold you in silence as deep as your emotions!

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Life of Emile Zola Starring Paul Muni, Gale Sondergaard, Joseph Schildkraut, Gloria Holden, and more. If you liked The Life of Emile Zola then you may also like: Young Mr. Lincoln, Vendetta, Wives Under Suspicion, Oscar Wilde, Black and White and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

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Young Mr. Lincoln

In this dramatized account of his early law career in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln is born into a modest log cabin, where he is encouraged by his first love, Ann Rutledge, to pursue law. Following her tragic death, Lincoln establishes a law practice in Springfield, where he meets a young Mary Todd. Lincoln's law skills are put to the test when he takes on the difficult task of defending two brothers who have been accused of murder.

Vendetta

Based on a true story, Vendetta tells the shocking and tragic story of a group of Sicilian immigrants working on the New Orleans docks in the 1890's. After the Chief of Police was brutally murdered, much of the city's Sicilian population was rounded up and brought in for questioning. Eventually, thirteen were formally tried for murder and nine went to trial, and while they were acquitted, a series of brutal lynchings showed they had as much to fear from the city's general populace as they did from the corrupt police force.

Oscar Wilde

England, 1891. Ascending writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) meets Lord Alfred Douglas, a young nobleman. Over the years, they will maintain an intimate relationship that will be openly criticized by Alfred's father, the Marquis of Queensberry, in such a harsh way that Wilde, instigated by Alfred, decides to sue Queensberry in 1895, accusing him of defamation.

Black and White

Australia, 1958. When a nine year old white girl is found murdered, police are quick to arrest illiterate Aborigine, Max Stuart. Under interrogation Max admits to the killing. With a legal system compromised by intimidation tactics, the skills of his two gifted but naïve defense lawyers are put to the test.

Brothers

Bob Naughton and Eddie Connolly are identical-twin brothers that were separated in infancy. Bob is raised by a rich lawyer, has all the advantages, but is a drunk with no moral character. Eddie is a pianist in a speak-easy but a man of high character. Bob commits a murder and Eddie is blamed and faces life in prison.

Sex and Lies in Sin City

Star-studded thriller about the sordid murder of reckless Las Vegas casino mogul Ted Binion. This gritty film delves into the twisted world of Binion's beauty-queen-turned-stripper girlfriend, Sandy, and her secret lover. When Binion turns up dead of an overdose, all fingers point to Sandy, the beneficiary of his millions. A shockingly true tale of love gone sour and greed gone wild on the dark side of Las Vegas.

The Mauritanian

The true story of the Mauritanian Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was held at the U.S military's Guantanamo Bay detention center without charges for over a decade and sought help from a defense attorney for his release.

In the Name of the Father

A small time thief from Belfast, Gerry Conlon, is falsely implicated in the IRA bombing of a pub that kills several people while he is in London. He and his four friends are coerced by British police into confessing their guilt. Gerry's father and other relatives in London are also implicated in the crime. He spends fifteen years in prison with his father trying to prove his innocence.

The Murder Man

Steve Grey, reporter for the Daily Star, has a habit of scooping all the other papers in town. When Henry Mander is investigated for the murder of his shady business partner, Grey is one step ahead of the police to the extent that he often dictates his story in advance of its actual occurrence. He leads the police through an 'open and shut' case resulting in Mander being tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Columnist Mary Shannon is in love with Steve but she sees him struggle greatly with his last story before Mander's execution. When she starts typing out the story from his recorded dictation, she realizes why.

Crown Heights

When Colin Warner was wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend Carl King devoted his life to proving his innocence.

Paths of Glory

A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.

The Trials of Cate McCall

In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.

Murder on a Sunday Morning

2001 French documentary about the murder trial of a 15 year old black teen accused of murder in Jacksonville, Florida. Winner of 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory

A further investigation into the arrest of three teenagers convicted of killing three young boys in Arkansas who spent nearly 20 years in prison before being released after new DNA evidence indicated they may be innocent.

The Phantom

Carlos DeLuna was arrested in 1993 aged 21 for the murder of Wanda Lopez, and protested his innocence until his execution, declaring that it was another Carlos who committed the crime.

Prisoner of Honor

France, 1897. Colonel Georges Picquart challenges the French government when he discovers the obscure political maneuvers that led to the imprisonment of the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus after being convicted of espionage in 1894.

Heavens Fall

Successful New York attorney Sam Leibowitz travels to the South in 1933 to defend nine young black men accused of raping two women on an Alabama freight train.

The Thin Blue Line

Errol Morris's unique documentary dramatically re-enacts the crime scene and investigation of a police officer's murder in Dallas.

Dreyfus

In 1894, French officer Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted for the treasonous acts of another man, Major Esterhazy. When investigations begin into the dubious evidence used in the trial, an institutional coverup begins, aided by fears of army disgrace and anti-Semitic paranoia against Dreyfus. But a determined group, headed by prominent author Émile Zola, leads a mounting public call to reopen the Dreyfus case.

A Covenant with Death

An innocent man is found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, but as he's about to be hanged he accidentally kills his executioner. He now faces a new trial, presided over by a young and inexperienced judge.

Devil's Island

A French doctor sentenced for treason performs brain surgery on the prison commandant's daughter.

I Accuse!

Alfred Dreyfus, a German-Jewish captain serving in the French Army, is falsely accused of treason and made a scapegoat for military espionage in an act of institutional anti-Semitism. Sent to prison, he becomes a cause célèbre for the novelist Émile Zola, who dubs it the "Dreyfus Affair." Eventually, Dreyfus is pardoned when the military cover-up is made public, and he returns to France. But his name is forever tarnished by the accusations of treason.

Murder 101

Charles Lattimore, an author of a book about a famous murder trial, arranges to meet with one of his students one night. When the student is found murdered and Lattimore has no alibi, he suspects he is being framed by the subject of his book.

I Want to Live

The movie tells the story of a woman who struggles and fights to escape the gas chamber being condemned with capital punishment because of her participation in a hold up in which a person was killed.

The Trials of Darryl Hunt

"The Trials of Darryl Hunt" is a feature documentary about a brutal rape/murder case and a wrongly convicted man, Darryl Hunt, who spent nearly twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Both a social justice story and a personally driven narrative, the film chronicles this capital case from 1984 through 2004. With exclusive footage from two decades, the film frames the judicial and emotional response to a chilling crime - and the implications that reverberate from Hunt's conviction - against a backdrop of class and racial bias in the South and in the American criminal justice system.

Witness for the Prosecution

Sir Wilfred Robarts, a famed barrister is released from the hospital, where he stayed for two months following his heart attack. Returning to the practise of his lawyer skills, he takes the case of Leonard Vole, an unemployed man who is accused of murdering an elderly lady friend of his, Mrs. Emily French. While Leonard Vole claims he's innocent, although all evidence points to him as the killer, his alibi witness, his cold German wife Christine, instead of entering the court as a witness for the defense, she becomes the witness for the prosecution and strongly claims her husband is guilty of the murder.

Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor

This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.

The Man on the Eiffel Tower

A down-and-out student is hired to kill a wealthy woman. When someone else is suspected of the crime, the student taunts police until they realize that they may have to wrong man.

Guilty or Not Guilty

Ruth Payne, innocent to begin with, is trying to extradite herself from the clutches of a gang-mob who obtained her release from prison on a falsified confession because they thought she knew something they didn't want known.

Midnight Mary

A young woman is on trial for murder. In flashback, we learn of her struggles to overcome poverty as a teenager -- a mistaken arrest and prison term for shoplifting and lack of employment lead to involvement with gangsters. In a brothel, she meets a young lawyer, scion of a wealthy and prestigious family, who falls for her and helps her turn around her life. But her past catches up with her, and she must face the music rather than cause him scandal.

Trial and Error

After nearly 40 years of waiting for his big chance, Wilfred Morgenhall is given the case of defending Herbert Fowle who is accused of murdering his wife. Despite Fowle's insistence of guilt, Moregenhall will not let go of the opportunity to plead his client as innocent and be a star in the courtroom.

The Fixer

Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kiev. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.

6,000 Enemies

A tough prosecutor who has sent dozens of criminals to prison finds himself framed on a bribery charge and winds up in prison himself.

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