The Passion of Joan of Arc
CARL THEODOR DREYER, 1928
3 STARS OUT OF 5
Dreyer is considered an expert at staging his scenes, a master of mise-en-scene, but with Ordet to a greater extent and Gertrud to a lesser, I found his stripped-down, minimalist sets to be excessively puritanical. With Ordet, the exceedingly obvious set-up and climax to the story were so in-line with the staging, 30-45 minutes in I felt like I could turn it off and write it up. The Passion of Joan of Arc is somewhat different, and I also think it’s a lot more adventurous, taking us almost completely out of the human world and into some nether region for one of the most famous trials, at least as far as charges and outcomes are concerned, in human history. Now, perhaps that big concrete courtroom looks precisely like the location where she was tried, the point is the featureless, white space makes a striking backdrop for all that is not, and the action can be focused directly on Joan and her accusers. Camera movement is slight and graceful, small pans or tracking-like shots showing the white men deciding her fate whispering their observations in a line, every scoff and show of exasperation used against them to show their hate and prejudice against this symbol of the French cause.
The torture chamber design is meticulous and horrifying. You can’t help but appreciate how, err, medieval, the whole set-up is. Yet, perhaps the most striking imagery comes outside, where Joan comes first and admits her “sins”, then returning after she retracts her confession to be burned at the stake. There is a good bit of intercutting as we get a close-up of Joan at her most desperate before cutting to a shot (vision) of a field of white flowers, then back. There are many such instances, well-timed and unsensational, where Dreyer’s editing is crucial to the meaning-making of the film beyond the large number of close-ups we get. It’s what takes the film to the next level and prevents it from going the monotonous paths of Gertrud and Ordet.
Yet, of course my writing on film centers around the experience of one, me, and while so much is written about Renee Jean Falconetti’s wonderful performance as Joan of Arc, there are only so many prolonged tearful close-ups one can take. That very element creates a situation where this saint-maker of a film gets a little too obvious and heavy-handed. The whole courtroom scene is labored in that fashion, ten tears, eleven close-ups, and twelve scoffs too many. Way too much of a good thing. While again, I appreciate the staging and Dreyer is able to give us the essence of the trial without being able to have the characters actually speak, quite a feat, it becomes dry well before it’s over. Where I think Falconetti really gets to shine is when the shots and filmmaking become more varied, and we can get a medium-shot of her holding the cross or a shot taken from a lower angle where the camera holds a gaze of her and the stake together, just shots that, while still sparse, hold a little more visual information and inevitably make the production far richer.
To an extent, as I’m this far into the Sight & Sound 100 (92 down, 8 to go!), the immensity of the task seems almost absurd. You could justify giving everything on this list 5 stars because they are such distinct works considered masterpieces by film scholars and high-minded critics around the world. Honestly, I have asked myself, Who am I to even be rating these films? They are unquestioned masterpieces of cinema. I’m usually on the side of so-called elitism and preciousness, but then if we, the enthusiasts, the megafans, the CINEPHILES, never weigh in in at least the smallest ways, which can spread, or not, who knows, but if we don’t try than no one is ever going to rethink this thing, and we’re going to be stuck with what the rather detached world of academia, as well as the decidedly homogeneous class of “Top Critics”, tell us*. As well, there is already way, way, way, way, way too much consensus on what makes a film “good”, at least within the world of American film criticism. I’d rather give everything 1 star and declare The Beach Bum the only film that has ever mattered/will ever matter before I do that. Anyway, I didn’t intend this aside originally for The Passion of Joan of Arc reaction, but I think it’s likely that I feel like with this film more than any other so far that I’m staring down one of the most sacred of cows, one of the films most entrenched in the canon, and thought, Yeah, it’s good, but goddamnit it has been surpassed by more than just eight other films, two of which were actually made in the same time period anyway. Maybe it’s heresy, but give me like several hundred films I’ve already seen over this and probably thousands more to come. You’re good, Joan, but there was no heavy metal!
I have more ideas about canonization and being a mere David staring down the Goliaths of the canon coming post-marathon.
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*I don’t hate the intelligentsia whatsoever, they have an outsized opportunity to study and consider works in their fields and should know more. I've even considered getting my Ph.D., or Ed.D. as it would be, and joining the world of academia in my particular field. Yet their opinions also seem to fossilize, so we have three films from the 1920s, despite all the advancements in technology and technique, in the top ten films of all-time according to one extremely reputable poll. As far as I know, this isn’t a poll of the most influential films of all time, or the greatest building blocks of cinema, but the outright best films of all time. While this continues to be an amazing and, I would argue, essential experience for someone who wants to go further in their knowledge of cinema, canonization is a tricky thing and you can certainly argue the Sight & Sound poll needs a little shock to the system, yes, to honor the past, but also look to the present and future a bit.