Day 62: The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is, without a doubt, a movie before its time. A silent picture, filmed in 1928 and starring Renée Jeanne Falconetti in the title role, “Passion” evokes a style of cinema and even acting for camera that had not yet become common place in the still new art form. While others were still toying with film, for instance the “talkie” “The Jazz Singer” had come out the year before, Dreyer’s work in cinematography, production, directing and lighting seems light-years ahead of the rest.
It would also be tragic not to mention Falconetti’s performance, which is grounded and, on many occasions in the picture, subtle-something unheard of as the rest of film actresses were still overdoing it and batting their doe eyes at the camera. To this day her performance is considered one of the greatest in cinema, and possibly the greatest of the silent film era.
In “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” Falconetti’s Joan has been caught by her English enemies and is now brought to trial. A mix of judges and ministers, the court questions and pries Joan in every way, hoping she will say something that will discredit or shake her notion that she is on a mission from God to drive the English from French soil. But Joan stands firm and, in many ways, stumps and befuddles her captives with her answers to questions about her quest, her ultimate goal, her attire, and even her God.
Though she never falters in her answers, the English continue to try and make her break- in hopes she will recant for her “sins” and make a confession. First, they try and deceive her by reading a fake letter from her French king, urging her to confess. Of course, Joan is no fool and she easily sees through the charade. Next, her captors take her the torture room and she is forced to watch as others are put in excruciating pain. Though she faints at this sight of the carnage, she is resilient in her beliefs and will not confess. Finally, the English threaten her with being burnt at the stake and Joan is finally faced with a fatal challenge. Will she confess or stand up for both her God and country?
The defining characteristic of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” stems again from how much it broke from the common film technique of the time and delivered a look that helped define what modern filmmaking is today. For one, Dreyer’s camera work fixes itself primarily on the facial features of its characters, shooting primarily in close ups to add to the tension. With this, the director played against convention and had his actors wear no makeup- adding to the film’s less theatrical and more realistic depiction of events. It also helped that Dreyer was using a new panchromatic film, which recorded skin tones more naturally than in the past.
What is even more amazing than the film’s modern feeling is that we can enjoy it in the first place. Met with a onslaught of tragedy, the original version of the film was lost for decades after a fire destroyed the master negative. After its destruction, Dreyer assemble a cut of the film from surviving prints and leftover shots, but, upon his death, he still believed his original cut was lost forever. Considered one of the most important discoveries in cinema history, an almost complete print of Dreyer’s original version was found in 1981 in, of all places, a janitor’s closet at a Norwegian mental institution. With that print restored, the Criterion collection was able to redistribute the film that now wows a whole new generation of film lovers.
A significant marker in the process of making the technique of film art, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” remains an excellent film, shot and acted with a style before its time.
To learn more about “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” check out Criterion’s page here.
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