Over 130 years after he stood trial for espionage, Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus made headlines last month when French President Emmanuel Macron declared July 12 the date the country would remember him and the antisemitism that led to his imprisonment. This presidential declaration follows on the unanimous vote of France’s National Assembly that agreed to raise his rank to brigadier general. These long overdue acts should also spur Americans to reflect on what happens when Jews become the battlefield in a political war that threatens to tear their nation apart.

Fortunately, they will have the opportunity to do so starting Friday when Roman Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy,” winner of the 2019 Venice Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, finally gets its U.S. premiere at New York’s Film Forum.

Released in Europe in 2019, the movie never came out in the United States for a range of reasons including the pandemic and new sexual assault allegations against Polanski, who was already a fugitive from justice in the United States after fleeing the country in 1978 before being sentenced for having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

But despite the scandal that surrounds him, Polanski is a master filmmaker, and as scholars whose work has centered on Dreyfus, we can recommend “An Officer and a Spy” despite its shortcomings that we will discuss.

The film revisits the Dreyfus Affair, which plunged France into crisis in the 1890s because it raised fundamental questions about the rights of individuals — and the........

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