The Passion of Joan of Arc
August 19, 2012 at 3:51 PM | Posted in Movies | 4 CommentsTags: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Renée Falconetti, The Passion of Joan of Arc
For those who forgive regimes for the torture of the innocent, who can justify, somehow, the need for large, generally male dominated organizations to put their ongoing existence above the people they purport to serve, who think of the Inquisition, the Witch Trials, the Holocaust, the Killing Fields, the harboring of pedophile priests, pedophile coaches as mere aberrations and not the direct result of an organized effort to stamp out any affront or embarrassment to Power, then The Passion of Joan of Arc is not for them.
They would miss what may be the greatest movie ever made — certainly the most profound, mesmerizing, most wrenching I have ever seen. This Silent (though not silent) Film was made in France in 1928 and by a miracle was discovered, wonderfully preserved, in Denmark in 1981.
The performance by Renée Falconetti as Joan must be seen to be believed. Nothing can compare to it.
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You’ve seen it before? Oh my god. Pure cinema. Recently named #9 on the Sight and Sound poll. But, Falconetti’s performance IS the greatest single female film performance of all time to anyone who has eyes. The close ups. Staggering.
Comment by Brendan— August 19, 2012 #
No, I had not seen it before. Yes, that is the greatest performance that I have ever seen.
Tom Mackey
Blog: Off the Blocks http://www.tmmackey.com
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> Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 04:10:00 +0000 > To: tommackey28@hotmail.com >
Comment by tommackey— August 20, 2012 #
Tom, “pedophile priests”…shouldn’t it be Homosexual priests??…since I just never hear of any of these perverts ever touching a little girl. Just a thought…I could be wrong(sure!!) MXM
Comment by Michael X. McGuire— August 22, 2012 #
Of all the classical European directors, Carl Dreyer was the one most able to communicate his spiritual motivations in his movies, as already seen in the previous Criterion Collection review of Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud . His masterpiece of silent cinema, a film so lauded that its reputation distorts the simple experience of seeing it, is The Passion of Joan of Arc. The original version on this DVD is not the same movie we saw in film school in the 1970s. Literally.
Comment by gold price— August 26, 2012 #