I wrote yesterday about Internet Archive, the site where there's a chance you'll find movies that you can't seem to get through normal channels (either a digital rental or a streaming service). And plenty you can get that way, but since I view the site sort of as "cheating," I usually use it only for the lost causes.
But then there are also movies that have been around so long that I feel like I shouldn't have to pay for them. I don't know, maybe after all this time, they've slipped into the public domain? That's my thinking anyway.
And so it was that I started to watch my second-to-last film in Audient Classics on Internet Archive -- for about ten seconds, until I realized it would have no musical score.
At that point I capitulated to paying the $3.99 for an iTunes rental of the 95-year-old The Passion of Joan of Arc, in order to watch/listen to it as I did the first time back in 2012, with Richard Einhorn's 1994 score "Voices of Light" accompanying it. (Hiring a live piano player to come play with the Internet Archive version would have cost a lot more.)
It was as part of another series on this blog that I first watched the movie. That was my 2012 Getting Acquainted series, where each month I chose some cinematic luminary whose works had so far eluded me, and watched three of them. That was a great April as I also watched Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet, which is also in my top 200 on Flickchart and was also a candidate for this series. (The third film, Day of Wrath, was good, just not in the same stratosphere as these two all-timers.)
As you would know, The Passion of Joan of Arc contains what is considered to be one of the single greatest acting performances of all time by Maria Falconetti. I'm not reading up right now on what her method was, but Falconetti seemed to effortlessly produce tears on command, to give these thousand-yard stares that indicated the way she was weighing her duty to God against her instinct for self-preservation. I'm sure there are some viewers who would think of her performance as too much, as would be the case with any performance that might qualify as someone's description of the best of all time. A consensus best acting performance would also come close to a "most acting" designation, but I challenge anyone to watch this movie and not see it as an unparalleled commitment to embodying an emotionally tortured woman.
One thing I forgot about -- both from history and from this film -- is that Joan actually lost the battle between her ideals and her survival instincts, at least initially. Her judges from the church, eager not to actually execute her, held her limp, defeated hand up to a confession written out for her on parchment, though we are meant to believe it was she who ultimately made the movements that would qualify as a signature.
But then, before she lost all respect for herself, she recanted -- meaning that she was more or less lashed to a stake within the hour. Or so this movie tells it.
It's the storytelling of this film that so fully astonishes. In 1928, obviously we were on the verge of the sound era and of film truly graduating to the more dynamic medium we know it to be today. But it still amazes me that Dreyer was doing such interesting things, that seemed so far ahead of their time, with angles, shot depths, camera movements and editing. Close-ups were never used as memorably -- before, but perhaps also since -- as they are in The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Did I catch some Jesus Christ Superstar-style anachronisms in there as well? Joan lived in the early 15th century, but some of the outfits of military types reminded me more of the late 19th century, possibly even World War I (which would have been only ten years in the past at this point). This I did google, and it turns out they are meant to resemble Prussian soldiers. The Franco-Prussian War was in 1870 and 1871, and that makes sense as that would have still been in the memory of some French who were alive in 1928. It's the soldiers who are most anachronistically dressed in Jesus Christ Superstar as well.
Which makes a good transition to Joan as a Christ figure. I was reminded here of the way the Romans and Pharisees were simultaneously contemptuous of Christ and basically pleading with him to save himself, which he refused to do. Joan underwent the same ordeal with the same outcome. That may be obvious to students of history, but since I know what I know about Joan from this film (and to a lesser extent the one directed by Luc Besson), rather than from the history books, it was helpful to be reminded of the real parallels between hers and Christ's martyrdoms.
As impressed and sometimes shocked as I was about parts of this film, there may have been no part that left me more shocked than the way it continues to go back to Joan's corpse after the fire has already consumed her. It's not graphic by today's standards, but neither is it left to the imagination. Eventually the charred body slumps over and disappears from view. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This woman had a corporeal aspect, but the film leaves little doubt that it believes her soul escaped her and into eternity. Or if it doesn't believe this, at least it believes that Joan believed it.
Although I've already got my final film in Audient Classics already line up for December, I do now really want to rewatch Ordet -- and there's nothing stopping me once this series is over. Dreyer continued to wrestle with Christian themes like resurrection and martyrdom throughout his career, Ordet being a prime example.
Okay, only one more film to go before this series is a wrap.
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