The Passion of Joan of Arc

by Jerry Roberts

"I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul"
- Sir Max Beerbohm

I would not be surprised to learn that Beerbohm was watching "The Passion of Joan of Arc" at the time that he wrote that. In the era before movies spoke, when faces were so vitally important to express joy and conflict, the eyes of Maria Falconetti are it's most lasting image.

Carl Dryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc tells the story of Joan of Arc in the process of several trials, interrogations, humilations, tortures and finally her execution. Through it all, our narrative focus is rooted in Falconetti's eyes as she registers the depths of dispair, hoplessness and confusion while trying in vain to fend herself against a court of religious judges who glower at her blasphamy. She believes that she has heard the voice of God commanding her and her jailers think that this unholy act makes her a vessel of the devil. The tragedy of Joan is right there in her eyes, what we read from her dispairing expression is the terrifying suspicion that she has been betrayed by God. Why would he grant her the gift of his commandment and then leave her when she needs him the most. From Falconetti, the eyes say a lot.

Director Carl Dreyer made his film in 1928 and made it his mission to eliminate all of the established techniques that had been advanced in filmmaking up to that point. He eliminated the rules of editing, makeup, set direction, screenwriting. He made a silent film a year after The Jazz Singer had put silent pictures on life-support and then insisted that it be presented without musical accompaniment. Those around him at the time must have seen this as career suicide and yet the film would go on to become one of the most reveared and studied films in the history of the silent era

The film is a masterpiece in every respect but most importantly in it's technique, he breaks the rules of film construction to tell a story that seems often like memory. In every other film the editing establishes placement of character and how they interact. We often are given establishing shot to place us in small or large rooms, or in buildings and house. In conversations, the editing allows us to understand the placement and perspective of everyone and everything in the room. Not in Dreyer's work, here we aren't sure from one moment to the next where one wall begins and another ends, where characters stand in conjunction to one another. Character enter Joan's cell and assault her verbally but often we aren't sure when that character came in and how that character stands in conjunction with Joan. This may seem to the casual viewer to seem lazy but if you follow the film from Joan's point of view it takes on the qualities of a nightmare where one images flows to the next and we aren't sure where we stand.

The convolusion of narrative is born out of Dreyer's refusal to work from a screenplay. Instead he creates the film from the transcripts of Joan's trial so we get a sense of the reality coming out of the nightmare. The effect is a feeling of being an eye-witness to an event in history, the spareness of the film and the choice to eliminate anything sleek and pretty gives it a documentary feel.

And in the center of it all is Maria Falconetti, giving her only screen performance and yet a performance that is said to have been the greatest ever put on film. It is her face that roots us in the gravity of the film, the heavy burden that she is carrying. Her eyes give us a window to the dispair and confusion of a woman who has been lead by God and then abandoned . Joan is told that her life depends on confessing the crime of heresy but she holds strong to the faith that God has spoken to her. Her frame is withered and she shivers cold, frightened and confused.

Dreyer uses the tight close-ups of Falconetti's face against those of her interrogators

Where everything else in the film is erratic and non-linnear, our emotions are rooted in what she is able to convey in her face. Falconetti was obviously an attactive woman but Dreyer resisted the temptation to make her look glamourous, she wears no make-up and was put through the torment of spending painful hours on her knees and long periods without food or sleep. The effect is that she is able to convey the torment of a woman who simply cannot cash in her faith in an effort of self-preservation. She believes that she has been instructed by God to lead the French in an uprising against the occupation by the British and cannot find it within herself to relenquish her faith in an effort to satisfy her interrogators.

What we are left with is one of the most effective uses of pure filmmaking in the history of the medium. Dreyer set out to make a film that used only what was needed to tell the bare bones of a story we already know. His spareness in his craft sets off beautifully against those haunting eyes - eyes that allow us to peer into a haunted soul.