0.5/4  Pass
I am not fond of this silent masterpiece. Mme. Renee Maria Falconetti has always scared me to death. Her ugly face and shaved head. This actually scares me, despite the fact I love Joan of Arc so much and that people are usually moved by t... (read full)

0.5/4  The Passion of Joan of Arc Quick Review
I really love Joan of Arc but Renee Maria Falconetti freaks me out. I really cannot stand this version of Joan of Arc. Dreyer has much better movies.

5/5 A dusty old classic...that still stuns and moves! A unique movie-viewing experience.
  by RMurray847 (Albuquerque, NM United States)
Off and on for YEARS, I would hear about the film THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC. While I am an avid movie fan and enjoy ALL kinds of films, I don't truly consider myself a film "scholar" and I always put the movie on my "see it some day" list. After all, it was made in 1927, so surely it could wait!!

Well, I finally watched in, on the Criterion Collection DVD...and I'm glad I didn't wait any longer. I'll say right now that this was NOT a life-changing event or anything that shook the very foundations of my understanding of what film could be. I had seen many reviews that said things like "actually makes you feel you're watching events take place in the middle ages. It's like a documentary made by someone who traveled with a movie camera back in time and filmed the events of Joan of Arc's trial." That is nonsense. However, it is a wonderful reminder of a time in early film history when the medium was so new; it was dominated by artists who brought a visual-arts sensitivity to the moving image. THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI is a prime example...a film informed by the static images of the German expressionist movement, rather than simple the art of filmmaking. (I will say that in my limited exposure, early American films behaved more like films we see today. It was the Europeans & Russians who crafted these blends of visual and cinematic art.)

THE PASSION OF ST. JOAN is, in many ways, merely a curiosity of early filmmaking. It's a movie that is terribly self-conscious in the way it is made...it insists that you CONSTANTLY be aware of the visual effect of filmmaker Carl Th. Dreyer. Yet the cumulative effect is one of great power...aided to a large degree by the startling, unique performance of Maria Falconetti in the title role.

The film, unfortunately, assumes that we understand a great deal about the story of Joan. It is based in large part on the actual transcripts of the trial of Joan (it's amazing that these still exist!)...but as a silent film, we are only given occasional bits of dialogue. My memory of the history is sketch, but Joan was a teenage girl who believed she was touched by God to lead the French people in a revolt against the English invaders of her country. She dresses herself as a man and literally leads the combat. She is put on trial by the church for various crimes of blasphemy...naturally the worst being that she is acting on direct instructions from God. Church leaders always seem to have a problem if someone more humble gets the straight word from God. Apparently, the trial was full of remarkable exchanges between the large cast of prosecutors and accusers, and the humble Joan, who continually shot down the arguments of these learned men, and also survived their cleverest tricks to trip her up and get her to confess her sins.

I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say that Joan eventually is burned at the stake for her crimes. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC shows the brief time in her life when he is a prisoner on trial and how this leads directly to her execution. We get no back story, and in the early going, this is quite frustrating.

Dreyer films his movie almost entirely out of close-ups. We jump from one prosecutor to another at a breakneck clip. These actors (all filmed without makeup) must fully commit themselves to their characters, and they all exceed very well. Whether we're looking at an elderly judge who clearly hates Joan, or a younger priest who believes she really is divinely inspired...we can tell, without needing the exact dialogue, pretty much what is going on in the character of everyone. The exact nature of what their thinking is most obscure...but the dynamics of what they're going through is clear. We see the trial, and then we see the subtle efforts to sway Joan when she is returned, exhausted, back to her cell. They tempt her with a chance to take Holy Communion or to give confession. They eventually show her the torture chamber. And towards the end, they take her outside to see the stake on which she will be burned. (And in a surprise, at least to me, she actually signs their documents to spare her life...but shortly recants and is led to her execution.)

I'm barely touching on the technical aspects of the film. The close-ups are the most obvious...they are powerful, yet, as I said, they make us CONSTANTLY aware that we are watching a singular visual vision that frequently puts art ahead of story. The film has very spare sets (although the excellent commentary points out to us how expensive and elaborate it all was). Many of the rules of filmmaking (which were well established at that time...such as the conventions for presenting points-of-view and helping viewers understand where characters are in relation to each other) are ignored. The crazy angles and scale of the German expressionists weight heavily in the French film.

And yet, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The effect of this great self-consciousness somehow manages to be moving. I think it's those "in your face" close-ups that give us the feeling that somehow WE are being questioned and intimidated.

And when the camera turns its scrutiny of Maria Falconetti...WOW! Her performance isn't like the over-the-top work we're used to from the silent-era...yet it IS big and exaggerated. It isn't the more "naturalistic" work we know from modern times...and yet it is stripped bare in a way actresses of today rarely achieve. Falconetti is first a striking figure. Dressed in men's peasant garb and with close-cropped hair...she looks nothing like you'd expect. And she has the most enormous eyes that mostly go from confusion, to fear, to sadness and most importantly, to a totally convincing religious ecstasy. Here is a person who has a direct phone-line to God...and yet it never appears outrageous, or over-the-top. Joan believes it utterly. She might be crazy or she might be saintly...it doesn't really matter what YOU think. What matters is that Falconetti has eerily captured a state in which one young girl is torn between her utter devotion to a God that speaks directly to her and has made promises and her very human fear of pain & death. Her performance is not quite like anything I've ever seen. Falconetti did not appear in any other films, and this fact adds a mystique to her performance...it's as though she was born to play Joan...literally. This is quite fanciful, of course, as Falconetti certainly had a rich, full, possibly sinful life outside of this film...and yet...and yet.

I'll also tell you right here that the execution of Joan is one of the finer sequences of any film. It is accomplished with great skill and great emotion is generated. There is a very small moment, when Joan is being tied to the stake. Her executioner, whom we never quite see, drops the line he is trying to affix to her hands. Joan sees this, and reaches down and picks up the rope for the man. Dreyer makes very little of it, and the moment is over quickly...but it says so much.

The DVD allows you to watch the film in true silence...no music, nothing. This is as Dreyer envisioned. There is also a musical soundtrack, written in recent times. I listened to this for awhile, but it didn't do much for me. But it is imperative that you watch the film and listen to the critical commentary. As with most Criterion films, this is a scholarly narration...but what's great is that it plays perfectly on top of a silent film. You can actually watch the film on its own terms AND hear the critical thinking on it at the same time, and the two do not interfere with each other.

I heartily recommend this film to anyone interested in what film has to offer beyond mere entertainment, but as an examination of the human spirit and a canvas for visual and dramatic artistry.

5/5 Astonishing...a life changing movie
  by J. Border
Words cannot do justice to this movie. The innovative and uncompromised vision of Dreyer, combined with the relevatory perfomance by Falconetti, are beyond description. The extraordinary will and courage of Saint Joan are captured as if the viewer has witnessed her passion in person. In our age of easy living, compromised morals and seemingly absent courage, the life of Joan of Arc should serve as a much-needed role model. This movie teaches us her example in the most direct, and yet extraordinarily artistic, spellbinding way one could imagine. So powerful is this movie that I cannot erase the images and emotional impressions of it from my mind.

Note: This DVD comes with the play option of musical accompaniment by Richard Einhorn's modern score with libretto. Although I was initially sceptical, Einhorn's composition is a masterpiece in itself, and provides a perfect musical canvas for this astonishing movie.

5/5 I felt like I was viewing Joan of Arc through a time portal.
  by Brian L. Morgan (Park Falls, WI USA)
This movie is excellent for a science fiction fan. Excellent acting and having the choir enhance the mood changes to the plot. The settings, characters, and the use of props was amazing. I felt like I was actually viewing the trial of Joan of Arc through a time portal. You have to remember this was the beginning of the movie industry and they had special effects back in 1928 such as Joan of Arc being burned at the stake. [...]. I bet that went over big back then. (LOL)

5/5 The Passion of Joan of Arc
  by Michael Penna
This was real acting. don't need any special effects. I rate this 6 stars. It went well beyond what was intended.

5/5 Has to be seen to be believed
  by JfromJersey (Manalapan, NJ)
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC is one of those films that can be critically praised till Kingdom come, but really must be seen to be fully appreciated. To say that it is one of the great achievements in the history of cinema is just stating a simple fact, but what you actually see up on screen totally blows you away.

This is not a life of St. Joan, but a depiction of her trial for heresy and subsequent execution at the stake. According to Dreyer, the dialogue was taken from actual trial records. Dreyer chose a relatively unknown French stage actress Renee Falconetti as his Joan, and she gives one of the great (maybe the greatest) performance ever in a film. Much of the film is shot in closeups, and Falconetti's face, with amazing eyes that are windows to her soul, burns in your memory, as the last days leading up to her martyrdom eerily echo those of her Lord and Savior.

The expressionistic cinematography and unique set design enhances the overall experience, but this is really a showcase for the principal actress. The final sequences are devastating in their emotional intensity, and you leave the film not only convinced that you have experienced an artistic triumph, but almost thinking you have been an eyewitness to history.

As usual, Criterion has done a top notch job in packaging this DVD. Be sure to watch the film with the Voices of Light oratorio as soundtrack for a unique and sublime experience.