(2017 Janus Films poster sourced via MUBI Notebook)
This film is introduced with context, not about Joan of Arc’s military exploits and who she was before her trial, but with a simple request to remember that she existed as a real person of flesh and blood. The audience is shown documents from Joan’s (or here, Jeanne’s) time in prison, which the film then depicts, her last days comprising the narrative of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s performance as Jeanne (her only cinematic lead role) is quite possibly the most breathtaking of screen history, conjuring a woman constantly pushed to the limits of her belief, shaken yet unshakable, and shot brutally front-on. Dreyer proclaimed he "wanted to interpret a hymn to the triumph of the soul over life” and he undeniably succeeded.
The power of cinema is its ability to get intimate in the lives of others, at total odds with the ‘panopticon’ of our everyday reality, where society functions as such that we know we can be observed at any moment by authority and others around us. This necessitates us to always be respectable, on best behaviour. Cinema allows audiences an amoral position of power, a voyeuristic way of seeing without being seen back. In The Passion of Joan of Arc, Jeanne is always the direct centre, a point of scrutiny for the combined church and state who are represented by an amorphous, masculine mass spying down on her. Falconetti’s head is gigantic on a screen, iconic in both senses of the word, and at several points in the contrast of the black and white film, a single tear falls down her face. She’s scared, but Jeanne is always milky-eyed and starring back, less at the men but to the God she knows she’s fighting for.
The vast majority of films adhere to what’s known as the 180 degree rule, where the camera doesn’t cross a specific boundary (particularly during conversation); as an example, if two people are facing each other, one is always on the left and the other is always on the right, allowing audiences an easy ability to map the space that the film takes place within. Dreyer and cinematographer Rudolph Maté explode convention, shooting The Passion of Joan of Arc almost entirely in close-ups with no regard for these grounding principles, depicting various talking heads which stare right at or just past the camera. With each actor almost always in front of a plain white backdrop, removing all unnecessary focus, Dreyer uncovers the deep, harsh textures of each persons skin. These people are most definitely real, and such detail of another being is rarely afforded unless you’re about to kiss them. Occasionally, the camera slides sideways across the many monks who conspire against Jeanne, literally rendering them as one wide, squawking singularity. We’re placed unbelievably in the centre of it all, spiralling around the various figures. We are not flies on the wall, but the flies who occasionally, very literally fly onto Jeanne’s face.
In all Dreyer’s defiance, The Passion of Joan of Arc never flows into the realm of incomprehensible abstraction; it’s easy to follow as a narrative film. He employed art director Hermann Warm, whose unique work on the sets for Robert Wiene’s silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari exemplified the wonky exaggeration of expressionism. Part of his work involved a giant, expensive set for this film which, even in its lack of architectural logic, is never detailed by a wide or establishing shot. Although the stoic humanism of The Passion of Joan of Arc may seem at odds stylistically with Caligari’s cartoonish gothic, Dreyer finds a similar atonal style in his total disregard for cinematic rules, throwing the camera in the boldest of places, creating a jagged psychic space rather than a literal one. As Jeanne eventually concedes that her fate is sealed, the film breaks out into a kind of montage where her hair is cut short and people riot in the streets. It’s as if the film is bursting out of its own intimacy, unable to trace the great pain of a martyr and her people in only faces anymore.
Dreyer noted his lack of interest in making typically historical fare, which “would probably have permitted a portrayal of the cultural epoch of the fifteenth century, but would have merely resulted in a comparison with other epochs. What counted was getting the spectator absorbed in the past; the means were multifarious and new.” The Passion of Joan of Arc is the tale of a real woman who - regardless of the reality of God - found real martyrdom, her body a site of the violent realities of unwavering belief. Dreyer explores the seemingly contradictory way that this works, noting that even though the fire burns her alive, “the flames protected her soul”. Although none of Jeanne’s holy visions are depicted, and no divine intervention ever takes place on the screen, Dreyer most definitely sees her as holy. The world of The Passion of Joan of Arc is an internal one, where God is held true in the hearts of those on screen, people whose flat faces on a screen are un-enterable surfaces, but rendered with such gorgeous detail that we have to believe what they say is true.
Next Friday - Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman in the Dunes (1964), which is available to stream online via Youtube.
(Polish poster sourced via Polish Poster)
Wow. Great review. You actually made me want to see it!