The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

There's as much going on with the performers' faces in The Passion of Joan of Arc as with the whole human body in other films.  With the refusal to match eyelines and the spatial incoherence of every scene in which she's interrogated, it doesn't seem like the people in this film really see each other.  But with the range of emotions that can cross her face in a moment--fear, bitterness, confidence, comfort in God's presence--we see her sensitivity to everything that's happening, plus a great deal more that she brought with her into the courtroom.  Her face is often depicted against a blank background as the film cuts between her face and other faces, or objects around her.  There aren't always eyeline matches, and when there are, the shot following at her face is usually at a bizarre canted angle.  It is usually very difficult to piece together the proscenium from a series of shots in this film.  The physical reality of what is happening, however, is palpable from the vividly captured textures in this film, and the sensitivity to everything that happens expressed in Falconetti's face.

The judges tell her she was deceived into believing God spoke to her.  Most of what the characters say in this film is a debate over this.  As in many of Dreyer's films, this is a film about a dialogue in which the speakers start asking each other unanswerable questions.  We can only judge their motives for speaking, not their words, and remain permanently unresolved about the truth.  Jeanne, however, does not.  She makes her own prophecy true, that she will be saved from prison and bring victory to France.  She is freed by her death, and she dies because she doesn't allow the dialogue that composes this film to end with an agreement between speakers, because an agreement over unanswerable questions would be a lie.  The film ends with crosscutting between the violent social explosion that takes place in the aftermath of her death, and her body burning at the stake.  The film keeps returning to her image after her death, the way it did before, and an omniscient intertitle tells us that she "the soul of France."

The film draws its words from the transcript of Joan's trial.  But dialogue is more than words.  We see the way Jeanne grips the cross at the end, her anguish at being denied mass, her brief moment of calm when she is finally permitted to take the Eucharist before her death.  It is not just her religious beliefs that matter to her, but her religious practices.  Going through certain motions with her body settles the energy we see carried in her face throughout the film. We also see her refusal to abandon men's clothing.  She has her own, more private practices that also reflect her relationship to God.

 

The significance of these practices is illuminated by historical details which aren't explicit in the film.  Unlike women's clothing at the time, the men's clothing Joan wears could be tied together in such a way that would make them difficult to remove.  Wearing men's clothes gave Joan a measure of protection against the jailers.  The judges' demands that Joan wear women's clothes are an attempt to assail her body.  

 
The aforementioned texture and sensitivity of the human body depicted in Jeanne's reactions to the judge's threats and arguments, combined with the many disorientations of this film, make it all the more surprising that Jeanne holds her ground for so long.  Her nervous system must be screaming at her to give in, and she only comes close when she signs a confession moments before the judges plan to execute her. 

 

What follows is a very strange sequence in which the film crosscuts between Jeanne having her head shaved for prison and a series of contortionist street performers outside among the crowd attending her trial.  When she sees a straw crown the prison guards mockingly placed on her head earlier in the film, she calls the judges to tell them that she lied in her confession only because she feared execution, and that she will now accept it.  The judges are not without compassion.  One even cries when he realizes she is going to die.  But they wouldn't dream of sparing her.  Jeanne's commitment to the truth and the judges' commitment to ensuring that the same incantations reliably produce the same results finally lead to the same conclusion, because together they make Jeanne's prophecy true: that she will be freed from prison and bring victory to France.  

She is committed to the truth, but again, the text used by the film is unresolved about what is true.  The truth is not discovered in this film, but we witness Jeanne's refusal of lies and inconsistency.  That's easy enough to accept on paper, but in practice it just isn't.  It isn't worth trying to phrase why.  You should just watch this film and observe the physicality of the human body and the sensitivity of the spirit, exposed in the expression of emotion, not only by Jeanne but by the judges.