Der Prozeß der Jeanne d'Arc

To appreciate this film you have to be a supporter of the 'less is more' school of thought. Bresson presents the viewer with a stark, simple story, employing virtually no cinema devices at all - whilst 'Trial of Joan of Arc' isn't one of his best known efforts, it bears all the hallmarks of his genius.

With a running time of just over an hour, the film covers the trial of the famous French heroine, the script solely based on the historical notes from the trial itself. As usual with Bresson, the cast is made up of non-actors who prove that simple delivery of potent narrative, can still be convincing.

The actress who plays Joan, Florence Delay, is superb and stunningly attractive - I assumed she was a major star of 1960's French cinema, rather than an unknown in her first ( and last?? ) role. The film concentrates so much on her character that she has to be convincing - every word she delivers has an edge to it and you can truly believe that here was a teenage girl who had an inner strength which entire armies would follow.

Everything which is good in foreign films is encapsulated here - the simple approach, the dialogue, the static camera and the realism. Bresson's next film was the highly praised 'Au Hasard Balthazar'(1966), which continued some of the themes, but overall I think this is the better film.

The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) chronicles the last days of the fifteenth-century French patriot, from her interrogation by members of the Parisian clergy to her execution by burning at the stake. In the entire film there are only three locations: the courthouse, the jail and the place of Joan's execution. The words of Joan and her prosecutors, lifted almost exclusively from transcripts of the trial, take centre stage.

The clergymen probe relentlessly into Joan's religious beliefs. Twisting her words at every turn, they insinuate that she is a pagan and a heretic. Joan, parrying each thrust of their argument, appeals to a higher religious authority to prove her innocence. The clergymen, however, are mere stooges of the British, and resolve to brand her a heretic. Facing death, Joan initially recants her heresy, but then reaffirms it, thus sealing her fate. Her meagre possessions are placed at the foot of the stake, echoing the way in which her testimonies have been used against her. A clergyman holds aloft a crucifix for her but this image of Christianity is lost in the smoke from her burning pyre.

The Trial of Joan of Arc features an impressive cast of non-professional actors. Florence Delay is superb in the role of Joan, radiating defiance behind her impassive countenance. A few of the performances elsewhere are a bit wooden, but the grave manner of Bishop Cauchon and the benign gaze of the sole sympathetic priest testify to the overall strength of the casting.

Running to little more than an hour in length, The Trial of Joan of Arc might seem on paper to be an insubstantial work. Yet this is an extraordinarily intense film, thick with powerful dialogue and requiring the full concentration of the viewer. For someone not fluent in French, it is a challenge to read the subtitles and follow the images on screen, but, whether you are French-speaking or not, I highly recommend this powerful piece of cinema.

This is minimalist film-making, with little beyond the questions and answers of Joan and the inquisitors. But what an impression it makes! How deeply we are forced to think about Joan! The calmness of her replies, her absolute consistency, her unassailable integrity, all leave you wondering, where did it all come from? What made her like this? She was no mere deluded martyr. It's not nearly enough simply to say she believed in her visions and her divine mission. She not only believed in them, she embodied her convictions so totally that it is difficult to understand her as a person without believing in her completely. No wonder her troops followed her into battle to their deaths! I think the transcript of the trial alone would be riveting, but this understated film does a wonderful job of bringing to life one of the most extraordinary people ever to walk the earth.

Bresson's film is quite extraordinary. An entirely static camera, a repertoire of what seems like only a handful of angles, and no music save the unnerving thumping of medieval drums at the beginning and end, all add up to a form restrained to the point of stasis. The movement of the film comes entirely from the words and from the faces. And from the rigorous choice of those few camera angles. It is a moot point as to whether or not it is relevant that the script is composed almost entirely of transcripts from the actual trial. However, the viewer armed with this knowledge must surely be privy to an extraordinary sense of time-travel - a restrained, respectful and highly spiritual journey back into the "dark ages". There is necessarily an inescapable sense of people hundreds of years dead speaking through the mouths of the (non-professional) actors, whose limited but affecting range fits perfectly with the curious juxtaposition of past and present, of cinema and grace.

As has been pointed out many times before, one of the primary differences between Bresson's film and Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc is in their formal delineation between good and evil; where Dreyer uses light and shadow to point up the difference, in the Bresson film the contrast is more subtle, resting, it would seem, mainly on the fact that the Bishop Cauchon is shut exclusively head on, whilst Jeanne commands a variety of oblique camera angles. But the subtlety of the camera also brings out a fantastic sense of time, space, and place. The numerous close-ups of period shoes are all we need to have the era set firmly in our minds; the medium-shots - and complete absence of anything like a long shot - simultaneously reinforce the claustrophobia of Jeanne's predicament, and focus our attention on her, and that which falls under her gaze. The one notable exception to this is the short series of shots while she burns on the pyre, of the white doves fluttering above the canvas awning, suitable parallels with the absent characters of the Saints Catharine and Margaret, whose presence is felt and whose names recur throughout the trial. A simple film, formally, perhaps, but only in the sense that everything is pared down to a minimum, and the choices are only made with the greatest of care and most rigorous of logic. The words and the faces do not need embellishment. They need attention and simplicity, in the same way that the words uttered by the real Joan of Arc are simple and unadorned. A masterful marriage of form and content.

This is a very brief review of Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" and Robert Bresson's "The Trial of Joan of Arc".

Some thoughts...

1. What's immediately apparent when comparing these two films, is how focused Dreyer is on showing the opposing forces present at Joan's trial. Who was the chief architect of her martyrdom? The English invaders who imprisoned her? The French clergy who tried and condemned her? God? The girl herself? The people who identified with her and gave her martyrdom political purpose?

2. Dreyer always keeps Joan isolated within the frame, plumbing a solitary soul's duress under persecution. Elsewhere he deftly shows the transformation of the witnessing masses from a crazy mob into a responsible voice of moral protest.

3. Maria Falconetti, who plays Joan in Dreyer's film, is given some of the most celebrated close ups in cinema history. What became of her? One legend claims that she so identified with her one major film role that she ended up in an insane asylum, convinced she was Joan.

4. Unlike Dreyer's film, Bresson's is filled with non professional actors. His is a dry, almost distant film.

5. Whilst Dreyer's film oozes grand emotions, Bresson's is modern, minimalist and existentially blunt.

6. Bresson avoids the circus and stresses Joan's solitude. His Joan is defiant in court, but privately she is at a loss, constantly praying for answers.

7. Dreyer's Joan (a kind of instinctual folk hero) acts according to her feelings, while Bresson's acts according to her conscience, which fluctuate as she broods.

8. Bresson's Joan is actually reluctant to embrace martyrdom. She's in over her head, unsure, confused.

9. In Dreyer's film, the audience becomes both Joan and the masses supporting her. In Bresson's, however, the audience is positioned as an outsider. We're the prison guards, the jailers, the priests, always "seperated" from Joan (by holes, by walls, by bars). The poor girl's kept at a distance.

10. Bresson's film is filled with visual echoes. Joan's hands, chained across a bible, resemble a pair of wings. At her execution, her hands, now tied behind her back, reappear in closeup. When doves appear, shot from below, we are reminded of Joan's "winged" hands to haunting effect. The point: an image of confinement has become one of ultimate liberation.

11. Bresson's film begins with two sounds: the ringing of church bells, followed by a drum roll. It ends only with a drum roll. Joan silences the Church that has put her to death.

12. Bresson has criticised Dreyer's film on numerous occasions, stating that he found the acting "grotesque". He's right. Joan was a hardened warrior who fought with men. Why then does Dreyer portray her in such a melodramatic fashion? On the flip side, Dreyer's images do tap into something almost primal.

13. Bresson's film abounds with delicious ambiguities. Was Joan really receiving messages from God? Is she deluded? Was she a crazy freedom fighter or holy saint? Was she simply a 15th century terrorist, opposing the English occupying army and the tents of the Catholic Church?

8.9/10 - "The Trial of Joan of Arc"

8/10 - "The Passion of Joan of Arc"

Both masterpieces, though I personally prefer Bresson's austere approach. Worth one viewing.