Joan the Woman

I'm convinced that one of the reasons that Joan The Woman was filmed by Cecil B. DeMille was to bolster the Allied cause and the cause of France in World War I. We were not yet in the war but that very issue was the main issue in the campaign for president in 1916.

It's hard to imagine an opera star being an entertainment idol in this day and age. But Geraldine Farrar was just that. With that in mind DeMille got Famous Players-Lasky to sign Farrar who was an opera soprano known for her acting ability as well as singing. Silent films afforded her a great opportunity to use the same kind of histrionics used on an opera stage that for the silent screen was essential.

Why DeMille didn't opt for just a retelling of Joan Of Arc's story is beyond me. The whole ploy with Wallace Reid playing a contemporary British soldier in the trenches and his ancestor fighting in France against the French in the Hundred Years War was both ludicrous and doesn't wear well with age. I suppose possibly the message was that France and England enemies before were now allies in a great cause as great as the one Joan gave her life for.

Reid finds a sword that belonged to the Maid of Orleans and he uses it as a talisman of sorts to communicate with the long dead maid. Then we go back in time to the struggle for France to liberate and unite as a people against the English conquerors. Where Reid meets the Maid on two occasions and his life is saved. Unfortunately he can't reciprocate when her time comes.

Farrar is a find Joan Of Arc. DeMille knew what he was doing in bringing her to Hollywood, her operatic training was what was needed for the silent screen believe it or not. She did the same in another DeMille production of one of her leading roles, Carmen.

Raymond Hatton is fine as the feckless King Charles VII who also let Joan down in the crunch. Theodore Roberts another DeMille favorite was chillingly evil as the Bishop Of Cauchon the one who tried her and judged her a witch and a heretic.

It's hardly historically accurate, but other than Reid's grafted in role it's not a bad film. Joan The Woman has the kind of spectacle and special effects that made the reputation of Cecil B. DeMille.

Interesting spectacle with opera star Geraldine Farrar as Joan of Arc. The costumes and sets are impressive, and the battle of Orleans is well staged. Wallace Reid appears in a dual role; first, as an English soldier in the trenches of World War I who has a vision of Joan, and then as an English soldier during the time of Joan of Arc who is saved by her, but ultimately is ordered to capture her. Raymond Hatton, as the spineless Charles VII, is quite good, as are most of the supporting actors. The burning-at-the-stake scene is harrowing and realistic. The copy I saw on YouTube appeared to be a 1997 restoration, complete with a pipe organ score.

You must watch this film from a certain angle, and you also have to know in advance who Cecil B De Mille was, in which way he oriented his movies. Big budget for many of them, high christian propaganda movies, destined to naive audiences, a bit dum for my opinion, great stories which he set up according to his desires, his political opinions, his belief, no matter the actual facts. De Mille was the perfect anti realism director, among many other ones, I admit. His silent era movies were overlong, and some of them speaking of couple relationship from a Christian point of view. I saw a dozen of those and I will never repeat it again. But he also was a specialist of gigantic productions, only excellent for the eyes, rarely for the purpose. This movie is a big metaphor, using Joan Of Arc myth for WW1 in France. It is a good film, if you wish to know some De Mille's stuff, and not so known too. Less than THE TEN COMMANDMENTS for sure. Awesome battle scenes around a castle assault. In actual history, Joan Of Arc has never been tortured. Put in jail, certainly yes, but not tortured.

All the Demille trademarks are here - huge crowd scenes, wild orgies, torture - but there is also a beauty and imagination here that is lacking in some of his later work. The use of double exposures for Joan's visions, the magnificent use of lighting and colour tinting, reveal a film-maker of greater depth than we might expect.

Opera diva Geraldine Farrar seems a little old and hefty for Joan of Arc, but once you get past that she truly gives an excellent performance. And Wallace Reid as her English lover lends strong support.

The camera is a little static and the "spectacular" battle scene is really just hundreds of people running around waving sticks in the air and falling backwards off walls (and I think very little attention was paid to the safety of the extras and the horses), but this is still a very rewarding and innovative film. And we get the original 1916 score performed on a Wurlitzer.

The historical story is framed by a World War 1 (then currently raging in Europe) scene, which adds poignancy to the piece, but does make the central thesis of the story (that God takes sides in wars) a little harder to take. Ramon Novarro's in this somewhere - can you find him?

Geraldine Farrar's performance as Joan of Arc, along with some memorable visual sequences, are the main reasons why "Joan the Woman" is still worth seeing today, despite the availability of many other movies about the celebrated French heroine. Although Farrar is not as remarkable as Maria Falconetti was 11 years later (which is by no means a criticism of Farrar - no one else has come close to Falconetti in the role of Joan, and most probably no one will for many years to come), she is very good, especially given the limitations of the time.

Except for clearly being older than the historical Joan was, Farrar conveys pretty well the most important characteristics of the heroine. She and DeMille did well to avoid making her too feminine, instead making her a strong and interesting leader with a limited but heartfelt set of priorities. The story does include some rather fanciful DeMille touches, but as cinema they work well enough, even if on a handful of occasions they may seem out of place in Joan's story. The screenplay also gives Farrar a chance to show many different sides of her character.

Some of the large-scale sequences are also nicely done for an era in which film-makers usually had to work out by themselves how to film such scenes, with only a handful of previous examples to go by. While some of the seams might show now, they did a very good job with what was available, and they must have looked rather impressive in their day.

Raymond Hatton performs well enough in the rather thankless role of the weak king Charles, and Theodore Roberts has some good villainous moments as Cauchon. Some of the other characters, while satisfactory, are a bit too non-descript to be a fully effective complement to Joan.

The one real weakness of the movie is the now-extraneous sequence set in the World War that was in progress when the film was made. It's not bad in itself, and contemporary audiences might have found it worthwhile, but the story of Joan of Arc is really powerful enough that it should be allowed to stand on its own.

Overall, "Joan the Woman" is a good to very good movie in just about every respect, and it is still among the better Joan of Arc films. Perhaps the only one that is clearly superior is the amazing 1928 Dreyer/Falconetti masterpiece "The Passion of Joan of Arc". Since there are a number of sound movies about Joan available, this one unfortunately may not get much attention anymore, but for those who still enjoy the silents, it's worth seeing.