The Passion of Joan of Arc: A Silent Spectacular

Donald P. Goodman III

Silent films are all too often ignored in our modern day and age, but even those of us inclined to ignore them should seriously watch and contemplate this film. Director Carl Theodor Dreyer and all the actors, especially leading lady Maria Falconetti, have created a piece that will last for the ages.

Filmed in 1928, The Passion of Joan of Arc is now firmly ensconced in the public domain. Because it is a silent film, when originally presented to the public it was accompanied by music played manually, by an artist present in the theater, and it's not really certain what that music may have been like. As a result, there are now many versions with many scores; the one your reviewer considers most moving is accompanied by Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light:

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) w/ music and subtitles

The truly remarkable thing about this film is how close we came to losing it; a fire destroyed the original, and though the director was able to recreate it with some alternate takes, the actual original cut was long thought lost, until a copy was found in Denmark in 1981, incredibly pulling this masterpiece from the dustbin of history. The version above, in addition to excellent music, contains the original French intertitles, with English translation superimposed on the film.

Films about la Pucelle are all too common, but this one is powerful, among many other ways, in the circumscribed nature of its subject: this is about her passion, her trial and execution, not her life. There are no depictions of her great battles and triumphs, of her capture; it begins with her being led before her judges, led by an impeccably played Cauchon, to be questioned: “What is your name?” And her answer is delightful in its simplicity, a powerful testament to this poor, uneducated, ignorant country girl, whose deep and unconquerable faith reconstituted a nation:

In France, they call me Jeanne, but in my country, they called me Jeannette.

When asked how old she is, Joan has to think and count on her fingers before responding:

Nineteen years old, as I remember.

Joan was unlearned, unlettered, illiterate to her last day, and unsophisticated. Her faith was strong, unshakeable, but not educated. It was easy to fool her by using strange words, by asking trick questions, and the trial demonstrates that. But still, she knew Who had called her and what she was to do, and nothing could shake her from that. When the judges ask her if she “pretend[s] to have been sent by God”, she answers simply “Yes”; but after a moment gives them more:

In order to save France. It is for this I was born.

And when a judge asks her, “Thus you think that God hates the English?”, her answer is so direct that it cannot possibly be the result of learning, much less of subterfuge:

Of the love or hate that God has for the English, I know nothing. But I know well that the English will all be hunted in France, except those who will die there.

This last line is accompanied by a very knowing look at one of the soldiers guarding her, and predictably produces a strong reaction.

The film is taken very closely from the annals of Joan's actual trial; it is obviously much too short to be verbatim, or even to take a sampling from all the sessions of the lengthy proceeding, but what is there is very accurate to what really occurred. And Joan's simplicity is on full display. We can see that she loves God, that she will do whatever she must to fulfil His will, even though she knows so little about the world and what it holds.

The trick played on her, when one of her judges pretends to carry her a message from King Charles and acts as her friend, is tremendously cruel, and we can see the childlike trust she places in the priest and the deep betrayal when she realizes the end. In the absence of voices, the face must carry all the emotion in a silent film, and the faces here do a stunningly effective job.

But most powerful is the end, which is built up to very effectively. Finally, she is admonished, and when she retains her convictions, she is brought to the site of execution. But as we have said, Joan is a simple girl; and at the sight of the stake, and with all the pressure from all these judges, these churchmen whom she has been brought up to trust, she falters. She signs an abjuration, and her sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. This suits the judges, who claim to represent the Church but truly work for the English crown, just fine; either an abjuration or an execution serves their purposes. If she abjures, she is neutralized as an effective force; if she perseveres, she will be burned. Either way, they need no longer fear this pesky little girl from Lorraine.

The divergence from true history begins here, but in this case the divergence is slight. In truth, Joan persisted in her abjuration for four days; in the film, she recants almost immediately. But the point is the same: she knew that this was not her mission, was not what God had called her to do. She knew what God wanted from her, and she would do it—even to death.

As a backslider now, since she had recanted her abjuration, the only possible punishment was death, and she was duly sentenced. The scene in which her assigned confessor comes to her, “to prepare you for death,” may be one of the best in the history of cinema, were it not topped by the coming scene at the stake. Joan's reaction is clearly full of sorrow, and indeed fear, yet also of resignation. Her confessor asks her:

Tell me, how can you always believe that you are sent by God?

Clearly, he is asking her why she should believe it, when it ends at the stake. Her answer, though, is simple and direct:

His ways are not our ways.… Yes, I am His child.

She had earlier spoken of a great victory that He had promised her, and of her deliverance. Her confessor asks her: “And the great victory?” Again, her response is simple and direct:

My martyrdom!

“And your deliverance?”

Death!

The priest, of course, offers to hear her confession, which she eagerly accepts; her face when she hears this question is so full of joy one nearly believes that she really is Joan. And when the Blessed Sacrament is brought to her, and she is able to receive her Lord one last time, the Lord Who spoke to her in her voices and led her to this death at the stake, we see that Joan's faith is beyond any pain and sorrow that await her—and indeed, a great deal of both will shortly come. She will suffer much, but her peace is not in escaping the flames; it lies in Him Who was just placed on her tongue, Who gave her this mission at her birth.

Her confessor clearly believes in her, and continues to encourage her on her way to the stake; he tells her, “Have courage, Joan; your last hour is near.” And the tension builds more and more as she is led to the stake. For though this is a time long before powerful visual effects, even analog ones, the film is not going to skip her burning. We will see her death, every moment of it, and Falconetti's performance makes it real, far more effectively than any digitally-enhanced pyre could ever have done.

Indeed, we see her fastened to the stake; we see the crucifix offered to her, which she embraces with a love and joy that it's hard to believe is merely acted:

Very gentle God, I accept death with all my heart… but don't let me suffer for too long. Will I be with you this night in paradise?

Even at this moment, when she is about to be burned alive, she embraces her Savior; more, she calls the God Who has brought here “gentle”! And her sorrow when the executioner takes the cross from her later is vivid.

The film has taken a first-person view throughout, sometimes from Joan's view and sometimes from that of others. It makes for a deeply intimate experience, feeling the impact of all these real, historical characters on one another. At this point, the film juxtaposes Joan embracing the Cross with the infant of a bystander, nursing at his mother's breast; he pulls away momentarily, to see, and then returns. This is a powerful image of Joan, receiving her nourishment from the Cross in this, the most difficult moment of her or any life: the moment when that life ends, and she will meet the One Who made her.

The film gives us a close-up of Joan's death—the smoke, the flames, the agony—as Falconetti's performance is so compelling that it's genuinely hard to believe. Her confessor holds out the Crucifix to her, always before her eyes, as she suffers the agony of the flames. The bystanders are horrified as this innocent child is put to the torch, and a riot ensues as Joan meets her Maker, a peasant shouting at the English, “You have burned a saint!”

The riot didn't happen, though of course the people were very unhappy about the execution, and she was venerated as a saint immediately. But as Joan's eyes close for the last time in her final agony, she gazes through the smoke and sees the crucifix held up for her eyes. “Jesus!” she sighs. He Who had led her from the country, to the side of the King, and now to the fiery stake, always before her eyes, always in her heart. A mission that she had from God, that she followed to the bitter, painful end.

It's often hard for moderns to adjust to the notion of a silent film; it requires much from us as well as provides much to us. Just as, when watching a black-and-white film, we must read in the colors and shades that aren't there, in a silent film we must read in much more; it requires an active role that modern films simply do not. Nevertheless, this film is one of the most powerful that your reviewer has ever seen, silent, colored, or otherwise. It merits a showing for lovers of Joan, lovers of the Faith, and lovers of film alike.

Praise be to Christ the King!