The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) *****Directed by Carl Theodor DreyerMy tweet:The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)- Rarely a wasted image in this most devastatingly beautiful treasure. Falconetti is perfect. ***** of 5Other thoughts:Though unimaginable in its circumstances, the story of the trial of nineteen year-old Joan of Arc is ultimately a simple one. An uneducated, illiterate girl believes she is a vessel of God and is willing to be tortured and killed for her faith. That's it right there... anything else is superfluous.In telling this tale, there are two artists of note working in perfect unison. One is the great Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, who also made the noted master! pieces 1932's Vampyr and 1955's Ordet. The other is Maria Falconetti in the title role giving what may very well be the greatest movie performance I've ever seen, right up there with James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Both masters of their art strip everything away right down to the soul of this young woman's story, and yet, there's little at play which could be described as minimalist. There's nothing small in this epic story of internal religious combat leading ultimately to agonizing martyrdom. Joan of Arc's epic turmoil is given room to breath precisely because, during Joan's trial, Dreyer and Falconetti hold onto only what's absolutely essential.Never have I seen a film so dedicated to nothing else but telling a story. In this sense, The Passion of Joan of Arc proves almost sacramental in nature. It's a vessel through which something can be transmitted in full integrity without ever acting as an end in itself. Falconetti especially gives her face and her emotions ove! r fully to Joan's love of God, and not once does she come acro! ss calcu lating or smug. As an actress at the end of the silent film era, she could easily have imbued her performance with an all too common melodramatic theatrical acting style employed by someone like Lillian Gish. Instead, Falconetti's soft, subtle, nuanced and devastating as Joan of Arc.Clearly pulling from German expressionism, Dreyer takes what's essentially a transcript of a trial and makes it so achingly cinematic, especially during the final scenes when Joan is burned at the stake. During her martyrdom, the heavens and the earth quake in injustice, and this is shown through arresting chaotic images, many of which are filmed in purposefully disorienting ways, culminating in some shots that are presented upside down. Granted, the best parts of The Passion of Joan of Arc are the moments when Falconetti is allowed to act, and so the final sequence, which feels a bit like the Odessa Steps in Battleship Potemkin and contains a few images that come off slightly indulgent, shows pe! rhaps the only lag in one of the most tightly constructed and successful masterworks in all cinema.This achievement proves profoundly disturbing and invigoratingly transcendent at the same time. Falconetti never appeared on screen again, dedicating the rest of her career to stage acting. Her performance and this film are so good, it's not too much of a stretch to say they're slight glimpses of that which is true beauty. This is a movie meant to honor Joan of Arc, and it succeeds not only in its goal, but also by honoring cinema as an art form at least as well as any other movie ever made.
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