Dreyfuss on Dreyfus : A True Story Of Anti-Semitism Comes To HBO From The Viewpoint Of The Flawed Hero

In a dark, cavernous mixing studio on the Disney lot, Richard Dreyfuss stood before a sprawling movie screen, watching and listening to a cluster of children:

Alfred Dreyfus, Alfred Dreyfus,

Dirty Jew, dirty Jew,

Safe on Devil’s Island, safe on Devil’s Island,

Let him stew, let him stew.

The children on screen were skipping rope in front of a Catholic church to the meter of a playground rhyme about Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who, because he was a Jew, was convicted of espionage and treason in the French Army during the 1890s.

“Can I hear what it sounds like if you give the children’s voice a little less presence?” Dreyfuss asked a sound editor seated at the mixing board behind him.

Because director Ken Russell was relieved from Saturday night’s HBO movie “Prisoner of Honor” over a creative dispute, the responsibility fell on the shoulders of Dreyfuss, who starred in and co-produced the film through his own company, to finish postproduction. Dreyfuss the actor was supposed to be done with the project in April, but it was September and Dreyfuss the acting director was putting in 18-hour days, six days a week, to complete editing, scoring and mixing.

In the film, Dreyfuss does not play Dreyfus, but rather the upper-crust Col. George Picquart, an anti-Semite who discovers that his French army used the Jewish officer as a scapegoat and risks his reputation to try to correct the injustice.

After making Dreyfuss’ requested change, the sound editor replayed the sepia-toned work print. On screen, Dreyfuss the actor emerged from the church, dressed smartly in uniform, and frowned down on the chanting children as the camera moved in on his face.

Below in the mixing studio, Dreyfuss the director, his hands stuffed in his jean pockets, stepped closer to the screen, and eerily locked eyes with his own 15-foot image.

“I’m very glad it’s over, that’s for damn sure,” Dreyfuss, 43, said several weeks later when contacted by phone at a hotel in Washington. “It’s finished and I have no idea about it at all. I’m so close to this. I’ll probably know how I feel about the experience in a year.”

“Prisoner of Honor” has not been an easy project to pull off. Dreyfuss, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three young children, is an armchair antiquarian who devours historic literature as easily as dime-store novels. He grew up believing he was related to the victim of the scandalous Dreyfus Affair, as it was known. The actor’s original family name is Dreyfus, which he changed to Dreyfuss when he first began acting professionally while a student at Beverly Hills High School.

Although the veteran film star would have preferred to see “Prisoner” as a theatrical release, he brought the project to HBO. “If I had tried to make a feature film of this story, I would have been spending all my time persuading and selling the point to executives. I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted to make the movie,” he said.

Dreyfuss hired Russell--the flamboyant British director of such wide-ranging films as “Women in Love,” “Altered States” and the current NC-17-rated “Whore”--to give “Prisoner” an edge.

“We wanted a rude director who says to the audience, ‘Watch this! Come over here! I know this isn’t the way you usually see it, but come on over and try it,’ ” co-producer Judith James said. “You don’t want to go lightly into territory like anti-Semitism and government cover-up without really going for it. You want to go into it with courage.”

But the relationship apparently soured during production in England. When Russell turned in his second cut of the film without making certain changes the producers asked for, the project was taken from him.

“And Dreyfuss had the cheek to say, ‘I know you’re very good on music, so I’ll send the film back when I’ve cut it my way and you can supervise the music,’ ” Russell later raged to the British press. “That’s a bit like someone asking you to hold your sister down and spray her with perfume while he rapes her.”

Russell also told newspapers that he shot scenes in master shot with few close-ups so that HBO would have no cutaways to re-edit his work, and he accused Dreyfuss of being more concerned with his appearance than the production.

“We wanted a rude director, and we got one,” James said wryly in hindsight.

Asked to respond to Russell’s attack, Dreyfuss respectfully refused to engage in a war of words. “When this film is over, I will probably write Ken a letter, and I will say to Ken personally what I have to say,” Dreyfuss said calmly. “But I don’t think the press is a forum to deal with this.”

In the end, after viewing the producers’ final cut, Russell left his name on “Prisoner” as director.

Dreyfuss and James pulled in every chit they could to squeeze the most production value into the $5.2-million film, which they said would have cost three times as much to make theatrically. Dreyfuss has lived and breathed “Prisoner” ever since filming began in January, to the point of passing up another movie he was scheduled to shoot for Universal in August.

But the actor found the whole effort worthwhile, and the story worth telling. While other films have dealt with the Dreyfus Affair--1937’s “The Life of Emile Zola,” starring Paul Muni, and 1958’s “I Accuse,” directed by Jose Ferrer--neither examined Picquart’s point of view.

“Anti-Semitism was so part and parcel of the way we people looked at the world at that time,” said Dreyfuss, himself Jewish. “A lot of the great novels written in the latter half of the 19th Century and early 20th Century--’Beau Geste’ and ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’--have sequences in them where Jews are isolated and made fun of in the story.

“So Picquart’s assumptions were his class assumptions. He didn’t like Jews and he didn’t like Dreyfus personally. What no one counted on was this extraordinary sense of personal justice. I guess I find myself drawn to him because he’s flawed and human, and he rises above his own flaw. Most of the time heroes are perceived as perfect, and Picquart was not perfect. Yet he did not let himself be defined by his imperfection.”

Neither did Dreyfuss. After an infamous traffic accident in 1982 and subsequent arrest for possession of narcotics, Dreyfuss has risen above--and left behind--his addiction. “That is the point where I began again. You know, BC and AD. Although it’s never really going to be in the past.”

Dreyfuss and his partner James are currently in development on three feature film projects. They are acting projects, but Dreyfuss hopes to direct an entire film soon.

“I grew up and became a young actor and a film star driven by a compulsion, an obsession, a love affair with acting,” Dreyfuss said. “That love affair is now a like affair. I like what I do. I haven’t found yet what will replace that passion, and maybe I won’t. I mean, I’m 43 years old. I’m happy with my wife and children, and my life is in balance. Maybe this is where I am now.”

“Prisoner of Honor” premieres Saturday at 9 p.m. on HBO.