EC: THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC

(LA PASSION DE JEANNE D’ARC)

Spiritual rapture and institutional hypocrisy are brought to stark, vivid life in one of the most transcendent achievements of the silent era. Chronicling the trial of Joan of Arc in the final hours leading up to her execution, Dreyer depicts her torment with startling immediacy, employing an array of techniques – including expressionistic lighting, interconnected sets, and painfully intimate close-ups – to immerse viewers in her subjective experience. Anchoring Dreyer’s audacious formal experimentation is a legendary performance by Renée Falconetti, whose haunted face channels both the agony and the ecstasy of martyrdom.

“With THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, there occurs a most striking change in both the film-maker’s style and his intensity of thematic concentration. A few potent shots in previous movies hardly promise the unique and brilliant imagery which here bursts forth frame after frame. […] The vision of JOAN is inspired or demoniac. Her passion is observed with clinical detail in the sharp-etched, stark compositions, many relentless close-ups. But this is also loving detail, for Joan is the first of Dreyer’s possessed, a lineage which may be traced through the victims of VAMPYR to Anne in DAY OF WRATH and Johannes in ORDET; characters who work out their passions throughout the process of their films with peculiar intensity and directness, so that identification with the director himself is implicit.” –Ken Kelman, FILM CULTURE

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