La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928)
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

Film Review

Universally acknowledged as a true masterpiece of cinema, Carl Theodor Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc continues to fascinate and beguile, offering a unique visual and emotional experience that makes it one of the most remarkable films ever made. The film's unsettling composition and its powerful depiction of the transcendence of a human soul set it apart from any other cinematic work and make it one of the most expressive and compassionate pieces of film art.  There is a sublime humanity to this film that is harrowing in its intensity and yet also spiritually cleansing.   No one who watches it can fail to be moved by its startling visualisation of Joan of Arc's trial and martyrdom.

Carl Dreyer had made eight films prior to this, most in his native Denmark, but also others in Sweden, Germany and Norway.  It was the success of his 1925 film Master of the House that led the Paris-based company Société Génerale to offer him a long-term contract.  The studio's speciality was lavish historical dramas and Dreyer was offered the choice of three subjects: Marie-Antoinette, Catherine de Medici or Joan of Arc.  He chose the latter, reputedly by drawing lots.  Dreyer appreciated the large budget he was given but rejected the screenplay he was offered.  Instead, he wrote his own script after months of painstaking research, using the transcript of Joan's trial as a source for the inter-title dialogue.

Dreyer took eighteen months to complete this, his most ambitious and innovative film.  His relentless perfectionism earned him the reputation of a tyrant and inevitably brought him into conflict with his bosses at Société Génerale.  Although the film won very favourable reviews when it was released, it only recouped a fraction of its production cost, and Société Génerale attempted to terminate Dreyer's contract.  The director reacted in kind by suing the studio (successfully) and then setting up his own production company, with the support of the wealthy aristocrat Nicolas von Gunzburg.  What could have been the beginning of a monumental filmmaking career in France would soon end with another dismal commercial failure, Vampyr.

The fortunes of La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc were even more chequered than that of the man who had created it.  It was an astonishingly original film for its time, quite unlike any film that had ever been made in the silent era.  Yet Dreyer's treatment of his subject made it also a highly controversial film.  It was banned in the UK for its perceived anti-English sentiment and received outright hostility from right-wing forces in France, who regarded its portrayal of the Church as overtly sacrilegious.  Not long after its first, commercially disastrous, release, the film's original negative was destroyed in a fire.  Dreyer then constructed a second version, but this too was lost in a fire.  In subsequent years, various badly mauled prints of the film were in circulation, leading some reviewers to question the artistic merits of Dreyer's so-called masterpiece.  Then, in 1981, miraculously, a near-pristine print of Dreyer's first cut of the film was found by chance in a caretaker's closet in a Norwegian mental hospital.  This unlikely resurrection silenced the doubters and instantly confirmed the film's standing as one of the great masterpieces of cinema.

The reputation of La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc rests on two of its more remarkable facets - the way in which the film is composed, almost entirely in close-ups, and a towering central performance from the actress who plays Joan, Maria Falconetti (also known as Renée Jeanne Falconetti).  There is an indefinable genius to Falconetti's portrayal of Joan that has made her an enduring icon of cinema, which is all the more surprising when you realise that this was her only significant screen appearance.

At the time she made this film, Falconetti was a well-known stage actress who had played minor roles in just two films.  Dreyer had originally wanted to cast an established French film actress, but he soon found that no movie star would voluntarily appear in a film without makeup and have her head shaved in front of the camera (the two main requirements of the part).  Dreyer settled on Falconetti when he saw her perform in a stage production of the scandalous comedy La Garçonne.  Falconetti had exactly the quality that the director was looking for, an ability to convey immense inner suffering behind a mask of serenity.

Maria Falconetti found the experience of working for Dreyer extremely arduous.  In his striving for authenticity, the director would systematically deprive her of sleep and food, and he would often force her to spend hours kneeling on a stone floor.   This might explain why Falconetti never appeared in a film again (although it is believed that Dreyer had planned to make a second film with her).  She went back to the stage and had a enormously successful career, appearing with the Comédie Française.  In the 1930s, Falconetti suffered a sudden cruel reversal of fortune, losing most of her money when her theatre went bust.  During WWII, she fled to Switzerland, and then settled in Buenos Aires.  Here, she threw away what remained of her fortune on a lavish lifestyle and compulsive gambling.  Before her death in 1946, she survived by giving elocution lessons to French-speaking Argentines.  The big comeback that she had hoped to make never materialised - a sad outcome for an actress who once gave what is widely considered the greatest screen performance of all time.

Dreyer's use of the close-up in La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc is deliberate and highly effective.  It serves two purposes.  The longer takes (which are mostly of Joan) compel the audience to empathise with the protagonist, to share his or her emotions as they slowly bubble up to the surface.  The shorter takes (most of which last barely a second or two) are assembled into a frenzied montage which suggest hostility and conflict.  Dreyer's intention is obvious: to portray Joan as a victim of an evil conspiracy.  She is the innocent lamb who is being savaged by the ferocious pack of wolves that are her interrogators.   The choice of camera angle reinforces this impression.  Joan looks upwards towards us as a suppliant, beseeching us to have pity on her.  By contrast, the judges look down on us, with grim intimidating expressions which suggest brutal authority that is bereft of remorse.  Whereas her persecutors are shown to be merciless upholders of a dead religion, their inner feelings as withered and gnarled as their cracked faces, Joan is portrayed as a true disciple of Christ, humble and incorruptible, her faith being all she has to sustain her against a relentless barrage of barren theological probing.

The film's unusual stylisation also plays an important role in defining and strengthening its emotional impact.  Rudolph Maté's cinematography, with its distinctive lighting and unusual camera angles, brings an austerity and stifling sense of oppression to the courtroom scenes, qualities which Maté would use to good effect on his subsequent Hollywood film noir thrillers.  The expressionistic set design is also effective, its disconcerting geometry and unnatural whiteness lending the film an unsettling dreamlike feel.   These stylistic touches convey the impression that the film does not take place in the real world at all, but rather in some shard of the imagination in which the only things that are real are the intense emotions of the protagonists. 

It is not hard to see just why La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc was so controversial when it was first seen.  It can so easily be interpreted as an attack on religious fundamentalism, characterising the Church as hypocritical and dogmatic, whilst boldly likening Joan of Arc to Jesus Christ.  The film's title reveals Dreyer's intent, to portray the Maid of Orleans as Christ.  In one scene, Joan is even forced to wear a crown made from straw and she is then referred to, mockingly, as the Daughter of God.  Joan's ordeal and execution so closely mirror the passion of Christ that we can have no doubt that Dreyer saw Joan and Christ as equivalent manifestations of the Divine.  The film's dramatic ending - a frenetic montage sequence in which crowds of peasants turn on the state (the Church and the army) to proclaim Joan a saint - reinforces the notion that this film is intended to be a representation of the conflict between faith and religious dogma.  As the world descends into anarchy, Joan's defeat at the hands of God's representatives on Earth is transformed into triumphant victory, leaving us with the consoling thought that, in the end, light must prevail over darkness.

Film Synopsis

In 1431, Joan of Arc is arrested and brought before a court of ecclesiastical judges on a charge of treason and heresy.  The Church believes that Joan's visions are manifestations of the Devil, but she maintains they are messages from God and his saints.  Under intense questioning, the 19-year-old peasant girl refuses to recant.  In the end, confronted with cruel instruments of torture, Joan is driven to confess.   Almost immediately, she retracts her confession and the court has no choice but to sentence her to death.  As her body is consumed by flames, crowds of on-lookers erupt into a mad frenzy and declare her a saint.