The history of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is all there on the screen. To watch it is to see a film that looks unlike any silent film ever made, and to hear its back story is to realize that it is an anomaly of all cinema.
Carl Theodore Dreyer, a Danish director working in France, made a stripped down version of a famous French story, cast an actress (Maria Falconetti) that had never and would never make a movie again, and he defied spacial rules that had governed cinema for years and would continue to for decades after.
With that, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is a series of shocking images without even musical accompaniment that was certainly ahead of its time and still bold and disturbing today.
Dreyer shoots almost entirely in close-up. As he traces back along the judges that will decide Joan’s fate, we barely see any of the characters below the neck, and what we are left with are faces so raw, telling and ominous and a camera so swift and rapid even before technology would allow such technique.
Watching it in silence makes one consider the Kuleshav effect, which says that two images side by side lead the viewer to believe that the person in the first image must be thinking about the other. I kept asking myself how all of these characters are thinking and judging one another, even if it’s uncertain to an audience whether they are actually doing so or even looking at one another.
At times the film is comically sadistic. It is loaded with symbolism and horrific imagery in the form of torture tools, blood letting from Joan’s vein, shadowy interiors and glowing, towering exteriors.
Falconetti’s performance is one of the best of the silent or verbal screen. Her eyes are bug-eyed, her face is unflinching and immersed. Everything about her performance is indicative of her utter hopelessness, and Dreyer went to great lengths to achieve that level of authenticity.
Because of all these things, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is one of the best films ever made, and especially a silent masterpiece. Granted, it is not the best silent film to watch if you are new to the genre. Nothing in this film is a good indicator for how films only years earlier were constantly static, full body compositions. It doesn’t even resemble “Sunrise,” the film from the same year that is credited for being one of the first films to break out of the cinematic norms with its graceful camera movements.
Nothing about “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is graceful or beautiful. It is a tough, powerful, enthralling film that seems to exist apart from the rest of its own influences and history.