A moving experience in music and silence
The Guelph Chamber Choir brought Carl Dreyer’s classic 1928 silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc (Le passion de Jeanne d’Arc), to St. George’s Anglican Church on the evening of Nov. 9. With music ranging from angelic to rapturous, the choir’s music added a new dimension to the incredible film, providing an undeniably powerful film experience.
Deftly placing both the film and Joan of Arc herself into context, Dr. Peter Goddard, chair of the University of Guelph’s History department, opened the event with a podium talk outlining Joan’s life and her longevity as an icon of freedom and sainthood.
Joan of Arc was born Jehanne d’Arc around 1412 in Domrémy, France, and left home as a young girl to involve herself in Charles VII’s army, claiming she heard the voice of God telling her that she could drive the English invaders from France. After a period of military prowess and an androgynous lifestyle, she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English. She was put to an unfair trial by the English and was tortured and harassed until she renounced the voices, then burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431, with the charge of heresy. The film is based entirely on her trial centered on a primary source document of the trial.
To portray the anguish of Joan of Arc’s suffering and her unshakeable devotion to God, Dryer used a mise-en-scéne – telling a story in a visually aesthetic way – to create a harrowing space in which the viewer is directly engaged, allowing them to empathize with Joan. With near-obsessive close up shots of actress Renée Falconetti against searing white walls and angular, visually striking architecture, Dreyer placed Joan’s suffering in the architecture of oppression and within the gaze of the judges condemning her, and these kinds of techniques have become a part of film grammar itself. Directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Martin Scorsese have made explicit references to the film and its influence.
Dreyer made his film in 1928, in the immediate context of Joan of Arc’s re-appraisal for her religious piety – her being beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Although it was an instant critical success, it was a victim of extreme controversy and a troubled restoration history. The version screened on Criterion DVD, which is considered the standard version now, was thought to be lost in a fire until a near-perfect original reel was, amazingly, found in a Norwegian mental institution in 1981.
Much silent cinema, admittedly, can be lost in translation for the contemporary viewer (movie buffs included). The filmic history of the silent period usually takes the viewer’s attention, and the power of the narrative is often lost. The Passion of Joan of Arc is a film like Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush or Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: a film that still holds overwhelming power and is an early assertion of cinema as a serious art form. The film’s screening with the music of the Guelph Chamber Choir and pipe organist Edward Moroney was an immersive and beautiful event, and an example how silent films should be screened.