About The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
The story behind the film
The Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer was invited to France to make a film, and he chose Joan of Arc, who had been canonised as a saint in 1920 and was enjoying a wave of renewed popularity. Rather than a sweeping epic about her battles, Dreyer made a film about her trial. He spent more than a year studying the records of Joan's 1431 trial in Rouen, and condensed the months of interrogation into what feels like a single, relentless day: the questioning, the threats of torture, Joan's brief recantation and her death at the stake.
For Joan he cast Renée Jeanne Falconetti, a stage actress with very little film experience. It would be her only major screen role, and her performance is often called one of the greatest ever filmed.
Cast & crew
- Directed and written by Carl Theodor Dreyer, drawing on the historical trial records
- Renée Jeanne Falconetti (credited as Falconetti) as Joan
- Eugène Silvain as Bishop Pierre Cauchon
- André Berley as Jean d'Estivet
- Maurice Schutz as Nicolas Loyseleur
- Antonin Artaud as Jean Massieu
- Cinematography by Rudolph Maté
Why it's worth watching
Almost the entire film is told in close-ups. Dreyer and cameraman Rudolph Maté film the judges' faces from below, looming and grotesque, and Joan's face in stark, unforgiving detail — Dreyer allowed no make-up. The result is something unlike any other silent film: the drama plays out in eyes, tears and tiny expressions, and you feel trapped in the courtroom with her. The set, a huge concrete construction modelled on medieval architecture, is mostly glimpsed in fragments, which adds to the sense of disorientation.
It's not an easy film, but it's an overwhelming one. Many viewers who think silent films are stiff or theatrical find this one the most modern-feeling film they've seen from the 1920s.
Fun facts
- French nationalists objected before release to a foreign director making a film about a national heroine, and the film was cut by church and government censors.
- For decades, Dreyer's own cut was thought lost, after a fire at the UFA studios in Berlin destroyed the master negative. In 1981 a complete copy of his final version was found in a closet at the Dikemark psychiatric hospital near Oslo, Norway.
- The film was voted fourth in the 1958 Brussels World's Fair poll of the greatest films.
- Cinematographer Rudolph Maté later moved to Hollywood and directed D.O.A. (1950), also on Starlite TV.
Public-domain status
The Passion of Joan of Arc was published in 1928 and entered the US public domain on January 1, 2024. Modern scores written for the film, such as Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light, are separate works; see "Rights & source" below for what we play.