Why to watch The Passion of Joan of Arc

Even those who cannot imagine watching a silent-era film - i.e., b/w, 1920s or earlier - let alone a silent in a foreign language (French in this case, though the director, CT Dreyer, was Danish), would probably be interested in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928): It's pretty short (87 minutes), the story is simple but dramatic, and the movie has some of the most extraordinary cinematography of any film before or since. It's the story of the trial - mostly pitting the 19-year-old Jeanne against a panel of high-church interrogators who try to browbeat her into confession and she won't budge: She says she has been chosen by God (through St. Michael, who appeared to her in a vision) to save France, by leading King Charles in a fight to expel the English conquerors. The film touches only lightly on Jeanne as a military leader and barely mentions the politics behind her trial - obviously, the leaders of the church were treated well by their King and by the English invaders and did not want to upset the status quo - and mainly it's a drama of interiors and of faces, Jeanne's with eyes wide open variously in terror, devotion, or mania - you decide - and almost always tear-stained - she cries enough in this film to be dehydrated. The inquisitors look brutal and hideous, even deformed. If there's a hell, that's were they are now for sure. Of course they fail to get Jeanne to give up her views - in fact they can't get her to give up wearing men's clothing (something about that seems to have really disturbed them), and of course the film ends with her execution - beautifully and terrifyingly photographed, as she burns at the stake. Only at the end does the film open up and allow us to see the people of France (and one rebellious cleric) who believe Jeanne was a visionary and saint. The film both humanizes her, sanctifies her, and does leave open the possibility that she was a troubled young woman. From the commentary I learned that she was sainted only in 1920, so the film had a bit of contemporary edge - and of course the film was frighteningly prescient, as anyone watching this movie singed the 1940s (it was apparently lost for many years and a good copy discovered only in the 1980s in a mental hospital in Norway, of all places) can't help but think of the French government and the appeasement of the Nazi invaders, the expulsion of the Jews, the prison camps and suppression of the resistance. You could imagine the same trial taking place in Occupied France circa 1944.