Screening Log, February 2005
The Passion of Joan of Arc
La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc / France / 1928
Some (more) thoughts on The Passion of Joan of Arc:
- Not that one can quantify or rank such things, but if one could, Falconetti’s performance would surely be the most astonishing in the history of cinema.
- The film is almost Eisensteinian in its cinematography and mise-en-scene, though Dreyer’s film is far less dialectical than Eisenstein’s work, and more expansive as a result.
- Robert Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc lays claim to a similar level of authenticity insofar as it also derives its script directly from the transcript of Jeanne’s trial. Each version functions to illustrate the incommensurability of the figure of Jeanne by contrasting the strictures of the patriarchical language of the Church (as exemplified by the interrogators’ document) with Jeanne’s unassimilable corporeality. But there are distinctions between Bresson’s and Dreyer’s projects: for Bresson, Jeanne is a “model”, a virtual cipher whose play of surfaces is to be construed or interpreted by both spectator and interrogator; for Dreyer, Jeanne’s interiority is available to us — her very soul is expressed, drawn out, in the sanctifying isolation of the close-up. As the titles suggest, Bresson’s film is concerned with the trial itself, the act of classification (and its slippage); Dreyer’s is concerned with the passion, the suffering. Thus, Dreyer’s film ends with the image of flames rising to heaven with Jeanne’s soul, while Bresson’s concludes meditatively on a pair of birds, witnesses to the execution but wholly unconscious of its human significance.
- Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, a score which Criterion added to their DVD, is a fine piece of music, but quite unnecessary and distracting for any viewing of the film. This is really one of those rare silent films ideally viewed without accompaniment of any kind.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Criterion Collection DVD
17 Feb 2005 1:19 AM | Submit Comment
