- The Passion of Joan of Arc
- La passion de Jeanne d’Arc
- France1928
- Carl Theodor Dreyer
- 81 DCP
- NR
Screening Dates
- April 26, 2018 6:30
- April 29, 2018 4:45
- April 30, 2018 6:30
- May 2, 2018 8:30
“Quite simply one of the great films … Falconetti’s Joan may be the finest performance ever recorded on film.”
Pauline Kael
Dreyer’s transcendent late silent masterpiece is perennially cited as one of cinema’s supreme works. Based on actual transcripts of the proceedings, the film compresses the months-long trial and torment of Joan of Arc into a single 24-hour period. Renée Falconetti’s legendary lead performance was long believed to be her only screen role (it’s now known she appeared in two obscure French films of 1917). Rudolph Maté’s brilliant cinematography employs extreme close-ups against stark white backgrounds; the actors don’t wear make-up. The result is a wrenching tour-de-force of emotion and expression; seldom has the face provided a more harrowing window to the human soul. A pristine copy of Dreyer’s long-lost original version of Joan was discovered in 1981 in a Norwegian hospital and is the source for this new restoration, which features as its musical score Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, a 1994 oratorio inspired by the film. See it with Bruno Dumont’s ultra outré Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc on April 29, 30 and May 2.
“One of the ten best films ever made.”
2012 Sight & Sound poll
“Seems like an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn’t exist.”
Jean Cocteau