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Silent 101Film 18 of 20
The Passion of Joan of Arc
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc
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Carl Th. Dreyer, Société Générale de Films, France, 1928. Renée Falconetti as Joan, using the 1431 Rouen trial minutes; Rudolf Maté's camera stays on faces, and the judges (including Antonin Artaud) crowd the frame, with no makeup. A concrete castle-prison built at Billancourt. French censors and the Archbishop of Paris cut the first release; a fire destroyed the original negative. In 1981 cans sent to Harald Arnesen, director of Dikemark Hospital near Oslo, proved to be Dreyer's Danish-censored 1928 cut, identified by the Norwegian Film Institute in 1984.
In two programmes
The camera is a face. Dreyer shoots the trial from the Rouen minutes, no makeup, in close-ups that leave nothing to hide behind, and Falconetti holds. The judges crowd in from odd angles. It is a silent film about speech: everything depends on what she will say and what she takes back.
The set stripped until a face is enough. Dreyer builds a concrete castle and then barely shows it; Maté keeps the camera on Falconetti and the judges leaning in. No makeup. The print that survives was found in a hospital closet outside Oslo in 1981.
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