The Passion of Joan of Arc (The Criterion Collection)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (The Criterion Collection)
by Carl Theodor Dreyer

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Movie Reviews of The Passion of Joan of Arc (The Criterion Collection)

Movie Review: I could write 10,000 words of praise for this masterpiece!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

A film any lover or student of film must not miss seeing

The images of the faces from this film are ones you will never forget. Whether you have seen the previously available murky video taken from a damaged print of the film or the beautiful and meticulously restored version recently released on a Criterion Series DVD.

There is one face, above all others, however, that will be remembered alongside any of the faces imprisoned on the screen within your head and that is the face of Renee Maria Falconetti. And Pauline Kael was right when she said: "It may be the finest performance ever recorded on film.''

Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968), the Danish director was preparing a large budgeted film on the life of Joan of Arc in 1927. He became fascinated however with the actual preserved transcripts of Joan's 1431 trial and began constructing a film that would include them in its narrative. He at one point was seriously considering American Silent Film star Lilian Gish for the role of Joan. The French were already outraged that the Danish Dreyer would be directing a film about their recently Sainted Joan, but to have an American actress portray Saint Joan? What an outrage!!! Dreyer let the rumors persist even after he had made a little known theater performer who specialized in light comedy and cabaret shows, his Joan of Arc.

Falconetti would become immortal (though she would never make another film, the ambitious theater company she started would become a financial failure and she would die in Rio Di Janero in 1946). Falconetti, who wore no make-up, and was filmed in sometimes unflinching close-ups and would become one of the most famous faces, one of the most praised actresses of all time, for one film.

One film.

This one.

And she would never make another one.

Director Dreyer would release the film without credits, and without a chosen music score to be played along with it's showing. The film has almost no establishing shots (it does have one of the torture room which still lacks enough of a perspective to give the viewer a conventional idea of room size however) and rely's almost entirely on stark close-ups of some of the most interesting and fascinating faces you have ever seen in any painting, photograph, or on film. Faces without make-up. Dreyer forbid the use of make-up on the film. It may sound positively Dogme95 to some.

It was 1928.

The film is based with a great deal of meticulous accuracy on the 29 cross examinations which led to Joan of Arc being burned as a witch at the stake in 1431. The film avoids any mention of witchcraft or the occult however. The film also condenses the 29 cross examinations into approximately 5, which is the number of reels the film runs (at 82 minutes). The film also ends with a riot that never actually occurred.

The film concerns itself with the trial of Joan and only the trial and results of the trial. There is no mention or flashback of the illiterate farm-hand from Orleans, who dressed as a boy, led French troops into defeat of the British occupation forces. How she was captured by Frenchmen who were loyal to the British and made to stand trial.

She was as the film shows, brought before a church court and charged with heresy. Joan believed she was the blessed daughter of God and had been inspired by heavenly visions. The church considered anyone who was certain they were going to heaven, to be a blasphemer. Anyone who did not need the church's blessing was undoubtedly possessed by Satan. Such people were ex-communicated, imprisoned and/or burned at the stake.

And so the defiant 19 year old girl, was made to stand trial and endure torture before being burned at the stake. She would become a recognized Saint in approximately 1914. 14 years prior to this film being made. Passion was one of more than a dozen silent films made about Joan of Arc. And some were well made exciting films that showed Joan bravely leading the French troops against the British.

This film did not.

This film was an extremely stylized film consisting mainly of close-ups. Over 1,500 edits were made in the film. The average film of the day consisted of 500 to 600 edits. A large budget was spent on the construction of a huge set, the largest set ever built at the time

Yet in the film, Dreyer never shows us but glimpses of the magnificent set he had spent millions on constructing.

There is nothing conventional about the film. Not then and not now. Dreyer uses stark close-ups and often breaks the rules of crossing camera sight lines to try and have us understand at least partially the fear and unbalance the 19 year old Joan was feeling when dozens of men, church leaders, politicians, and British soldiers, were interrogating her or trying to force her to sign a confession.

Everything about the interiors is stark and plain. Plain curved white walls which make even Dreyer's medium shots feel like close ups. Windows that are un-even and of slightly imperfect shapes (shades of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). Sometimes the bars in the window seem to resemble crosses, and sometimes crosses are seen as shadows on a floor or on a wall. Dreyer wants us not just to feel the oppression and fear of Joan, he wants us inside her head. He wants us to somehow hear her thoughts.

We do.

To make it all work, Dreyer had to have the perfect face, and had to be able to get a superior performance from a talented actress.

Falconetti.

Dreyer painstakingly over the course of a long six months shoot, extracted the performance he needed to have from Falconetti. He didn't let her or other actors use music to help inspire them as they performed (an accepted practice used by most film directors of the time). Dreyer didn't want the actors in this film to be `performing' or `acting'. He wanted something more pure and more natural. He forced Falconetti to shear her hair for the film. He made his actors shave the tops of their heads, because that was the style of the 1430's, even though most of the actors would be wearing skull caps and the audience would never know if the tops of their heads were shaven or not. Often he would excuse all but a few technicians and himself from the set to work with Falconetti , so she would give him the perfect expression he was looking for. Together they would watch dailies, so she would completely understand what he wanted from her. Dreyer was a perfectionist and wanted realism. People who worked with him often considered him not just intense, but insane. ( His best known films also include 1932's Vampyr and 1964's Gertrud). It's impossible to know what reaction this stark, demanding, unique, stylistic film had on the audiences of its day. Though one might imagine its power was even greater to an audience that was not raised with easy access to filmed and video taped entertainments. Critics quickly declared it a work of art, and even those who complained of it's over-use of close-ups rarely denied the film possessed an emotional power few films or stage plays could equal. It's a film which forces the viewer to experience a frightening perspective The perspective of a frightened, young, 19 year old religious martyr as she defiantly holds her ground against the nightmarish faces of her overly-righteous judges and tormentors. As Dreyer breaks the rules and violates even the camera's sight lines, the wall that separates the images on the screen, even these stylized stark black and white silent film images breaks apart and we can feel the fear, terror and coldness that Falconetti as Joan is experiencing. It was written, directed and edited by Carl Dreyer (though some of the original ideas in the screenplay Dreyer once contemplated filming remain). It was photographed by Rudolph Mate with art direction by Hermann Warm.

The film was re-edited a few times to appease the Catholic Church and also some censors during the late 20's and early 1930's. Dreyer who had hoped his film would be shown to a wide audience was disheartened his masterpiece was only appreciated by a small audience of rich entertainment patrons. Dreyer's original cut of the film was actually seen publicly only a few dozen times. The original elements were thought to be lost to fire long ago. So Dreyer himself went back and re-made the film from alternate cuts that were still available. But these versions of the film were sometimes cut, and became worn and deteriorated. Previous videos had been made from various pirated copies of the film. However, in 1981 an original Dreyer supervised ed

Summary of The Passion of Joan of Arc (The Criterion Collection)

Seeing Joan of Arc today remains a cinematic revelation, its approach to storytelling, set design, editing, and especially cinematography (by Rudolph Maté, who also shot Dreyer's visionary Vampyr) radical then, and still strikingly modern many decades later. Influenced by both German expressionist film and the French avant-garde, Dreyer's huge set was designed with asymmetrical doors, windows, and arches, through which Maté's camera moves along equally off-centered, even vertiginous, but fluid trajectories. Although the story is epic in its implications, the film is composed primarily of extreme close-ups, especially of Joan and her principal interrogator, Bishop Cauchon, and medium shots of small groups, often shot from low angles. Dreyer and Maté shot their cast in bright light, without makeup, giving each wrinkle, blemish, or tuft of hair sculptural detail.

For all its visual invention, however, Dreyer's film is most devastating in its central performance by Falconetti (née Renee Falconetti), a French stage actress who made her only screen appearance here--one critic Pauline Kael has suggested "may be the finest performance ever recorded on film." Through Falconetti, Joan's spiritual devotion, simple dignity, and suffering become utterly real; even without a dialogue track and only sparse inter-titles, the film achieves a fevered eloquence.

This meticulous restoration also includes composer Richard Einhorn's beautiful oratorio, Voices of Light, inspired by Dreyer's film and set to texts by women mystics from medieval and early-Renaissance Europe. A luminous work on its own, Einhorn's oratorio matches both the dramatic arcs and tremulous emotions of Dreyer's film, while its juxtaposition of choral and solo voices (with early-music vocal quartet Anonymous 4 evoking Joan herself) echoes the martyr's confrontation with the court. --Sam Sutherland