The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Official trailer

The Passion of Joan of Arc is the Carl Theodor Dreyer-directed silent French historical film that became a foundational work of cinematic acting and a much-imitated visual achievement. Dreyer directed and co-wrote with Joseph Delteil. The screenplay was based on the actual transcripts of Joan of Arc’s 1431 trial for heresy in Rouen. Renée Jeanne Falconetti plays Joan in her only major film role. Eugène Silvain plays Bishop Pierre Cauchon. Maurice Schutz plays Nicolas Loyseleur. Antonin Artaud plays Jean Massieu.

The plot covers the final day of Joan’s trial, her interrogation by ecclesiastical judges, her recantation under threat of torture, her recanting of the recantation, and her execution by burning. The film runs approximately eighty-two minutes at the era’s standard projection speed.

Dreyer spends eighty minutes on old men in robes leaning into a young woman’s face, and that frightens me more than any monster horror has produced. This film exhausts me. Nothing in the silent era moves me more, and very little made since comes close.

The film was produced for the Société Générale des Films on a heavy budget for its era.

Political interference (the French Catholic establishment objected to specific representations) and the limited international distribution typical of late-silent cinema complicated the initial 1928 reception. A December 1928 fire destroyed the original negative. Another fire destroyed a second negative shortly after. The film was widely believed lost in its original form for decades. A complete print was rediscovered in a Norwegian mental institution’s janitor’s closet in 1981.

The rediscovered print was the original Danish-language version. Later restorations have reestablished the film as one of the major works of silent cinema. The 2012 Sight and Sound poll placed The Passion of Joan of Arc ninth among the greatest films ever made.

The Falconetti Performance

Critics consistently cite Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s Joan among the greatest performances in cinema history.

Dreyer captures the performance almost entirely in close-up. Dreyer shot the production primarily on the actors’ faces with minimal makeup and unforgiving lighting. The camera captures Falconetti’s reactions to the interrogation, her shifts between fear and conviction, her exhaustion accumulating across the trial day, and her final composure at the stake, all with sustained intimacy.

Production circumstances contributed to the performance’s intensity. Dreyer pushed Falconetti through extended takes. He insisted on multiple repetitions of emotionally taxing material.

The exhaustion she displays on screen was reportedly the exhaustion she was experiencing. Whether Dreyer’s methods were ethical is a separate question from whether they produced the performance. The performance is permanently part of cinema’s vocabulary. Falconetti never made another major film. It was only her second film role. The performance is therefore complete in itself, isolated from career context.

The audience encounters Joan as Falconetti and Falconetti as Joan without distinguishing between them. I think it’s the greatest performance ever put on film, and I’m uneasy saying so because of what it reportedly cost her. That tension stays with me the whole time her eyes are filling up.

The Close-Up

The film’s most-cited formal achievement is its sustained commitment to close-up cinematography. Dreyer photographed the trial sequences almost entirely on the actors’ faces. The judges’ faces fill the frame. Joan’s face fills the frame. The audience sees the trial as a series of confrontations between human faces in close proximity. The technique was unusual for 1928 cinema and remains unusual in later decades. Most narrative cinema retains medium and wide shots to establish geography and to give the audience visual relief. Dreyer refused.

The choice has two effects. The judges become individual humans instead of abstractions of ecclesiastical authority, and Joan becomes a living person instead of a saintly icon. The technique is the film’s argument: particular men with particular faces made particular decisions to persecute her. Those judges, lit without mercy and shot without makeup, look like men I’d cross the street to avoid, and I think Dreyer meant exactly that. I admire this choice most in the whole film.

The Recovered Print

Its recovery in 1981 ranks among the most consequential archival rediscoveries in cinema history. A December 1928 fire had destroyed the original negative. Another fire had destroyed a second negative made from a surviving positive print.

Dreyer’s preferred version of the film was widely assumed lost. Critics had been writing about secondary versions, edited international cuts, and partial reconstructions for over fifty years. The version in current circulation was understood to be a compromised approximation of the original.

The 1981 discovery of a complete print in the closet of Dikemark Hospital in Norway changed the historical understanding of the film. The print had been there since shortly after the original release. A janitor found the film canisters in a closet during a cleanup. The rediscovered version contains scenes critics had described from secondary accounts but had never been able to verify. The restoration based on the 1981 print is now the standard version.

The film’s current critical standing depends on the rediscovery. The lesson about archival preservation is that what’s lost can sometimes still be found. I find the story almost unbearable to think about, a masterpiece sitting in a hospital closet for half a century while critics argued over compromised copies, and I’m grateful to whoever finally opened that door.

Does The Passion of Joan of Arc still hold up?

10/10, and I can’t think of a silent film I’d rank above it. Dreyer at the peak of his craft and Falconetti in her only major role give you a face you won’t shake for days. Watch the 1981-recovered version, ideally with Richard Einhorn’s 1994 oratorio Voices of Light as accompaniment, and give it your full attention. It’s eighty-two minutes of the hardest, most human filmmaking I know, and that closing execution sequence leaves me in pieces.

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