I was around eleven or twelve when I became infatuated with Joan of Arc, reading biographies of her and loving the idea of a maiden warrior for France unfurling her flag and taking the field for God and King. \u00a0That was the Joan who came to me, I suspect via a book aimed at pre-teens. She was feisty and strong and above all not hemmed in by a conventional sense of what women can or cannot do.<\/p>\n
The Carl Dreyer film shows a rather different Joan. \u00a0His Joan has lost her last battle and is on trial for heresy, with the penalty for a wrong answer potential burning at the stake. \u00a0His THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC is a 1928 silent film that uses intense close-ups to convey its moods. \u00a0The movie alternates tensely between closeups of Joan and closeups of her accusers and the one priest well-disposed to her case. Coming out, as it did, a year after talkies, the film was always out of sync with its times. \u00a0I saw it this weekend in the director\u2019s cut, accompanied by an original and quite stirring score that enhanced the mood.<\/p>\n
The film is an idiosyncratic masterpiece about a truly unique and stirring figure in world history. \u00a0The director reconstructed a medieval city which is shown only in tiny patches, showing an obsessive quality suitable to his subject, Joan. \u00a0For anyone who watches the film knows that Joan\u2019s over-the-top quality will surface in the end and doom her to the witch\u2019s death she so rightly fears. \u00a0Obsession. \u00a0Compulsion. \u00a0The heeding of inner voices. \u00a0Saints did it. \u00a0Artists do it all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was around eleven or twelve when I became infatuated with Joan of Arc, reading biographies of her and loving the idea of a maiden warrior for France unfurling her flag and taking the field for God and King. \u00a0That was the Joan who came to me, I suspect via a book aimed at pre-teens. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,84],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dev.jackmakesthings.com\/tor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}