The Passion of Joan of Arc
The first great demonstration that cinema is a prime instrument in the struggle for the improbable and the infinite and against the probable and the average (of course, it can be an instrument for the opposite too: hence the culture industry), in this case in the form of a ritual focused on the paroxysms of suffering and death, heightened by the asceticism of the starkly minimalist aesthetic.
Pauline Kael has no doubts, writing that it is “One of the greatest of all movies”, that “No other film has so subtly linked eroticism with religious persecution”, and that “Falconetti’s Joan may be the greatest performance ever recorded on film” (Kael, 1991, p. 568). Among all the other commentary that has been given on this greatest of all silent films, let us read that of Luis Buñuel, published in 1928 and taken here from Buñuel (2000), pp. 121–22:
“In this film constructed of close-ups, the director rarely, in fact almost never, employs a general view or even shows the foreground. Each close-up is composed with such care and artistry that these often become paintings without ever ceasing to be shots – one of exceptional, violently foreshortened angles, the camera almost always off-level. […] At times the entire screen is filled with the white wall of a cell, and in a corner, the vindictive forehead of a friar – only his forehead. We can anticipate his outbursts with meteorological precision. Noses, eyes, lips that explode like bombs; tonsures, forefingers brandished against the innocent breast of the Maid of Orleans. […] Dreyer’s genius lies in the way he directed his actors. In this regard, nothing the cinema has so far given us compares. The humanity in those faces floods the screen and fills the room. We all felt that truth in our throats and in the marrow of our bones – an antidote to snake bites and histrionics! […] And the humanity of the Maid of Orleans spills forth from this work of Dreyer’s more than from any other performance we have seen. We all wanted to give her a little thrashing just to be able to hand her a sweet right after. Not letting her have dessert to punish her childish integrity, her transparent stubbornness – that we could see; but why burn her? Spotted with tears, licked by flames, hair cropped short, dirty as a street urchin, still she stops crying for one moment to watch pigeons alight on the church cupola. Then she dies.
“We have kept one of her tears, which rolled down to us, in a celluloid box. An odorless, tasteless, colorless tear, a drop from the purest spring.“
Pauline Kael has no doubts, writing that it is “One of the greatest of all movies”, that “No other film has so subtly linked eroticism with religious persecution”, and that “Falconetti’s Joan may be the greatest performance ever recorded on film” (Kael, 1991, p. 568). Among all the other commentary that has been given on this greatest of all silent films, let us read that of Luis Buñuel, published in 1928 and taken here from Buñuel (2000), pp. 121–22:
“In this film constructed of close-ups, the director rarely, in fact almost never, employs a general view or even shows the foreground. Each close-up is composed with such care and artistry that these often become paintings without ever ceasing to be shots – one of exceptional, violently foreshortened angles, the camera almost always off-level. […] At times the entire screen is filled with the white wall of a cell, and in a corner, the vindictive forehead of a friar – only his forehead. We can anticipate his outbursts with meteorological precision. Noses, eyes, lips that explode like bombs; tonsures, forefingers brandished against the innocent breast of the Maid of Orleans. […] Dreyer’s genius lies in the way he directed his actors. In this regard, nothing the cinema has so far given us compares. The humanity in those faces floods the screen and fills the room. We all felt that truth in our throats and in the marrow of our bones – an antidote to snake bites and histrionics! […] And the humanity of the Maid of Orleans spills forth from this work of Dreyer’s more than from any other performance we have seen. We all wanted to give her a little thrashing just to be able to hand her a sweet right after. Not letting her have dessert to punish her childish integrity, her transparent stubbornness – that we could see; but why burn her? Spotted with tears, licked by flames, hair cropped short, dirty as a street urchin, still she stops crying for one moment to watch pigeons alight on the church cupola. Then she dies.
“We have kept one of her tears, which rolled down to us, in a celluloid box. An odorless, tasteless, colorless tear, a drop from the purest spring.“
Mini Review: The first great demonstration that cinema is a prime instrument in the struggle for the improbable and the infinite and against the probable and the average (of course, it can be an instrument for the opposite too: hence the culture industry), in this case in the form of a ritual focused on the paroxysms of suffering and death, heightened by the asceticism of the starkly minimalist aesthetic. Re-watched 4 September 2019, after a gap of more than thirty years since first viewing.
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