When I was a child, even as a young man, I often lost myself in the passion, the magic, of the Movies. Jump cuts, the disturbing informality of TV, deafening incongruous sound tracks working against the image (designed to sell CD's) -- many other factors, plus long experience, have all but robbed me of that joy.

Yet, strangely enough, a silent film made 70 years ago, sub-titled from a nearly 600 year-old French transcript, retains that power. I saw it yesterday, in its fullness and glory, for the first time. I am not a conventionally religious man, but I was lost for about an hour and a half in LA PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC. It was a kind of spiritual experience, different yet similar to the one I had when first I saw Michael Powell's THE RED SHOES in 1948.

The historical Joan and the film Joan had a trial by fire from which they both emerged into legend, more powerful than they had been in life.

The real Joan was born in the little French village of Domreime in 1412. Pious and passionate, she claimed to hear the voice of God, to have knelt before the Archangel Michael, to have been dedicated at the age of 16 to save France from English domination. She volunteered to lead an army against England in 1428. She no doubt was used in her innocence by the corrupt, squabbling princes of Provincial France, in particular The Dauphin. Identifying The Dauphin as God's rightful representative on Earth, she raised the Siege of Orleans, and was instrumental in The Dauphin's crowning as Charles VII at Rheims in 1429.

The next year, however, events went against her, and she was captured by the Burgundians, allies of the English, at Compiegne (scene of many a fateful turn in French History). She was tried before an Inquisitional Court at Rouen, condemned, and burned at the stake in 1431. Her simple courage and faith have made her famous -- lately in film -- down to the present.

This very year (2000), a mini-TV series (with Leelee Sobiewskie as Joan) and THE MESSENGER (Besson) proved that fascination with The Maid of Orleans still persists. Earlier, Otto Preminger conducted a GONE WITH THE WIND-style talent search, which produced Jean Seberg, actually almost burned to death in a disastrous SAINT JOAN (1957). Earlier still, Ingrid Bergman starred as JOAN OF ARC (1948), directed by the real director of GONE WITH THE WIND: Victor Fleming. It proved his last film, and a scandal attached to the movie ended Ingrid Bergman's career as a Hollywood leading lady.

The finest telling of Joan's legend on film occurred in 1927. Working at great pains with a 26 year-old French stage comedienne known simply as Falconetti, peripatetic Danish Director Carl Th. Dreyer created something like a cinematic miracle. Audiences who managed to see the film believed they saw the real Joan, but in trouble with the censors on religious grounds from the start, the film was held up and repeatedly recut until 1928. Then, the original negative was burned in a fire, and an alternative version, put together by Dreyer from out takes, was subsequently also destroyed by flames. For years, only mutilated copies were available.

In 1981, miraculously, an almost complete copy of the original was found in the bathroom broom closet of a Norwegian mental asylum. Ib Monty, Director of The Danish Film Institute, worked for four years with Maurice Diouzy of the Cinemathec Francais to assemble a nearly complete restored French text version. The running times were corrected, and over 20,000 blemishes were removed from the frames.

Finally, in 1995, Composer Richard Einhorn, inspired by finding LA PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC by chance one day, produced an oratorio "Voices of Light," utilizing the Medieval Music group, The Anonymous 4. Einhorn drew on the work of the French Female Mystics, such as Hildegarde von Bingen, and he went to Joan's hometown and recorded the church bells there, which he incorporated within the piece. It is this glorious counterpart to Dreyer's creation which is now its standard accompaniment.

The film begins with a statement that the dialogue is drawn, for the most part, from a transcript of the trial of Joan kept at The Biblotheque de la Chambre de Deputes in Paris. We see in a long pan the 130 Inquisitors gathering amid the protection of English Guards.

Joan is brought in, ankles and wrists in chains. Renee Maria Falconetti, with her cropped head, angular face and aquiline nose does not look immediately like a 19 year-old innocent, but in a few minutes we are in the simple power of her image.

As I think back, part of the effect comes from alternating shots of the old sweating faces of the Inquisitors with the medium close ups, close ups and extreme close ups of the luminous face and eyes of Falconetti. Sometimes she weeps, sometimes she smiles sweetly. Often she is anguished and then reassured, as if by some invisible force. To me, it was as if I were trying to comfort a woman I knew only slightly on the loss of her loved one. I would see her despair and then the light of memory in her eyes. No two expressions were ever quite the same.

Joan is asked a series of questions designed to test the validity of her faith. Can she recite the Lord's Prayer? Did St Michael come to her? Was he clothed when he came to her? Why does she wear men's clothes? What is her purpose? But she confounds her questioners by giving answers of great simplicity. Her mother taught her the Lord's Prayer. She knelt before St Michael. She has come to drive the English from France and will wear men's clothes until that is accomplished. "My reward will be the salvation of my God."

So effective is she that the English guards are removed, and a recess is called. A letter from Charles VII is forged by the Inquisitors, claiming he is marching on Rouen with an army to rescue her. Meanwhile she is being mistreated by her jailers.

Upon her return to the chamber, the Inquisitors extract from her a declaration that her God needs no Church to carry out his good works. They say her voices come not from God but from the Devil.

She asks if she may go to Mass. She is told, yes, if she gives up men's clothing.

And so, the cat and mouse game continues from stage to stage: torture, revival, an offer of the sacrament if she will confess, refusal, preparation for execution.

The power of The Passion of Joan of Arc derives from two factors. Only the Principals' dialogues are recorded. Others speak but, unless we are French speaking lip readers, we don't know what they are saying. We must concentrate on their faces and body language. Secondly, from the variation of camera set ups and close ups by famous Cinematographer Rudy Mate upon Falconetti's features, we are fascinated by the limitless flickering of emotion on that strangely classic face.

From the relative stasis of the first hour, we move to the high angle photography and rage of events surrounding Joan's immolation.

And always, there is the cool fire of Einhorn's voices and bells.

It is hard to say if LA PASSION DE JEANNE D'ARC would affect you as it did me, but I would not be surprised if it does.

Joan of Orleans was dead at 19 in 1431. England's Henry VI eventually retreated after being crowned King of France in Paris the same year. Charles VII made peace with the Burgundians and lived on to 1461.

Falconetti, as is often remarked, never made another film. She died at age 45, in 1946.









Recommended: Yes