Just watched first half of 1928 French film "The Passion of Joan of Arc"--amazing!

[zazen]

I now have streaming Netflix through the Wii for $9/month--what a great deal! So Netflix updates its "available to watch now" film list daily, and adds this French, silent 1928 film of which I've never heard.

I thought, okay. . . I appreciate foreign cinema slightly more than the average blockbuster-craving American, but I'm not exactly going to rush to spend 90 minutes watching a choppy, weird, overdone, stage-y, Joan of Arc with plucked eyebrows, every-stereotype-I-can-think-of-about-silent-films, film.

And then I kept reading the reviews of this film on Netflix, and then Googled to read more, and thought, how on earth can this be listed as one of the top 20 films of all time, and I've never heard of it. Am I that ignorant? (probably)

So I started watching it and was riveted. And now I can't finish it (for the past week) because Netflix has some error in it and the rest won't download. It's not like I don't know the ending, which I wonder about watching, anyway. She's so emotionally riveting, and it's so psychologically realistic, that the depiction of her execution (which I won't watch in contemporary Joan of Arc films) could be really disturbing.

Anyway, I just wanted to know how many other DU'ers have already appreciated this film--the actress's performance, which some have written is still the best film performance of any actress to date--and the cinematography, which seems decades ahead of Citizen Kane. . .

And if you haven't yet had a chance to see it and can, I highly recommend that you do. It really does a number of one's sense of history. As I watched it, I kept thinking, some of these actors had to have been born in the 1850s and 1860s and they're appearing in this work of film art that holds its own with works made 150 years after their birth. It's really worth viewing.

Here's some text from Wiki about it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc>

Responses and legacy

Pauline Kael wrote that Falconetti's portrayal of Joan of Arc "may be the finest performance ever recorded on film."<4><9> However, it was banned in Britain for its portrayal of crude English soldiers who mock and torment Joan in scenes that mirror biblical accounts of Christ's mocking at the hands of Roman soldiers. The Archbishop of Paris was also critical, demanding changes be made to the film.

The original version of the film was lost for decades after a fire destroyed the master negative. Dreyer himself attempted to reassemble a version from out-takes and surviving prints, but he died believing his original cut was lost forever. In one of the most important discoveries in cinema history, a virtually complete print of Dreyer's original version was found in 1981 in a janitor's closet of an Oslo mental institution.<9> This version is now available on DVD.

Scenes from Passion appear in Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa Vie (1962), in which the protagonist Nana sees the film at a cinema and identifies with Joan. In Henry & June, Henry Miller is shown watching the last scenes of the film and in voice-over narrates a letter to Anaïs Nin comparing her to Joan and himself to the "mad monk" character played by Antonin Artaud.

The Passion of Joan of Arc has appeared on Sight & Sound magazine's top ten films poll three times:
1952: #7<10>
1972: #7<11>
1992: #10 (Critic's List) and #6 (Director's List)<12>

It placed 31st in the 2002 Director's Poll and 14th on the Critic's Poll. Maria Falconetti's performance was named the 26th greatest film portrayal of all time in Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time<13> giving her the highest ranking silent performance on the list. The film is currently number 20 on the "1000 Greatest Films" of They Shoot Pictures Don't They? (a ranking based on votes by more than 1,600 critics, filmmakers, and film scholars). It was named by Art and Faith, an online group of critics, one of the "Top 100 Spiritually-Significant Films". The Village Voice ranked it the eighth of the twentieth century in a 2000 poll of critics.<14>Text

[Kahuna]

1. That was played on TCM a couple of months ago. I recorded it on

DVD but I have yet to watch it. Upon your recommendation I will be sure to watch it soon.

[onehandle]

2. My wife loves Netflix. It's coming out for iPhone.

It's great that they have such historically important films.

[zazen]

3. the film's portrayal of psychological abuse/groupthink is years ahead of its time

I'd expect this during the Red Scare (like the Crucible skewering McCarthyism), but in the Roaring Twenties?

Maybe it was motivated as much by her canonization in the 1920s. But the film's understanding of conformity issues make it seem much more a film of the 50s or 60s (when the term "conformity" had made it into Charlie Brown and claymation Christmas specials) than the late 20s.

[zeemike]

4. I saw it a few years ago

I was actually shocked at how good it was....Had no idea that films like that existed from that time.