The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Originally posted to Facebook on 7/14/2018

Before seeing our final film from 1927, we instead saw The Passion of Joan of Arc. It was our second film from 1928, since I have now retconned Harold Lloyd's Speedy into this project (which we saw back in August of 2016 when we were still working our way through 1916.) Like the earlier film, the reason we saw Joan of Arc out of order was that it was playing at the Alamo -- where, in addition to seeing it on the big screen, I actually won a raffle for the Blu-Ray just prior to the showing -- though to be fair my chances were quadrupled since Bianca and the kids were there as well.

The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer -- who continued directing up through the sixties -- and starred Maria Falconetti as Joan, who had made two films in the teens, but none subsequent to this movie. Falconetti was in her mid-thirties at the time of the film, and could potentially be taken for younger, but was clearly not 19 -- which in some ways downplays the absurdity of the trial, during which the film is almost entirely set. The film mentions at the very beginning how remarkable it is that we have the actual court proceedings from six hundred years ago -- essentially a transcript (which is available at https://bit.ly/2LgRkli as well as many other places.) And the majority of the film is drawn from that transcript. The closest reference point I have to the events in this movie is Shaw's Saint Joan -- which also liberally used that same transcript. But Shaw's play is much wider ranging -- including Joan's rise and fall, and, while it includes Joan's misery near the end of her life, it also has Shaw's characteristic wit and charm, as well as musings about Joan as an early emblem of Protestantism and nationalism -- whereas this movie covers only the last few days of her life.

The movie reminded me in some ways of Martin Scorsese's Silence, both because of the religious interrogations, but also because I suspect one's reaction is necessarily going to be colored by one's own religious beliefs. If you view Joan's visions as, in some sense, true, and believe that she is really communicating with the divine in some way -- then she is a martyr. If you view her as very likely mentally ill and delusional -- which is my perspective -- then her cause and beliefs become less important than her mistreatment. In fact, the most interesting thing to me about her life is not so much her trial and conviction -- it is how a teen-aged girl was able to lead such an enormous movement at a time there were very few women of any age in positions of power. Shaw addresses this a little in his play (entertainingly if not particularly convincingly) but this movie is single-mindedly focused on her faith and anguish, emphasized by a barrage of close-ups, both of her and her interrogators -- with just enough dialog and change of scenery to keep it from being monotonous, a line which it does occasionally cross. It is the kind of approach that is well-suited for silent movies, and the uniqueness -- at least as far as the films we've seen so far in this project -- of having long uninterrupted interrogation scenes gives it an intensity which I am sure is part of its lasting appeal.

Next week, we'll return to 1927, watching 7th Heaven, our tenth and final film from that year. It will be the second film we've seen directed by Frank Borzage, and also the second film in which we've seen Janet Gaynor. The list as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT