Week #6: Released in 1928, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, 82 minutes. New to me!

LetterBoxd Score: 4 stars

Every frame of this movie is like a painting. The faces of Joan’s inquisitors are filmed in sharp detail, with high contrast, while Joan is bathed in soft light. The faces are the opposite of generic; the inquisitors skin is richly textured, and highly expressive. Joan though, wins for expression; she twitches, the cries, her eyes radiate fear but also a kind of obsession verging on madness.

And it’s bold in its structural choice: we’re given the equivalent of a the museum card describing the work you’re about to see and suddenly we’re in a court room and the questioning, apparently drawn from the actual court transcripts, is underway. It’s also unsparing in its depiction of how Joan is ultimately executed; the fires grow closer and closer, and then we see a shadowy body burning, flames licking across the blackened head.

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?

It’s starkly beautiful (another incremental advance in the technology of filmmaking is apparently the film stock used); it’s structurally bold; it’s unsparing.

And yet, it’s also limited in my view. All this virtuosic acting and cinematography is deployed to tell a story that is a bit one-note. Falconetti’s performance hints at wells of deep faith, but mostly she is scared and suffering. Her interrogators, meanwhile, are close to archetypes: some support her, most regard her with disdain and seek to bully or trick her. Does anybody change?

I get that that’s the point, but there was much more to these people’s lives than this one day and you don’t get that sense here. The things Joan must have seen; do we get a sense of who she used to be? Obviously, if you have to pick this or The Messenger, you pick this. But at least The Messenger points out that there was a wider world out there and a wider set of human experiences than what was on display at the trial. If we’re picking the top ten greatest movies ever made, I want more on the canvas.

Next week: Man with a Movie Camera