Joan of Arc

The difference between the butchered 100 minute release of Victor Fleming's final film, JOAN OF ARC and the original 146 minute version is like night and day! UCLA has worked on restoring this film to its uncut form for some 10 years -- the results can now be seen with the May 2004 release on DVD by Image-Entertainment. My opinion of the film has greatly changed for the better. For some years I have had access to the 100 minute cut on a nice Laser Disc copy. Seeing the new DVD is a revelation. Not only is the Technicolor splendor of the original on the DVD, but the film as conceived by Victor Fleming is 100% better in its restored form. Ingrid Bergman may be a bit old to play the part, but she is quite marvelous as is Jose Ferrer as the Dolphin, in this his first film appearance. If you have any interest in this film and have only seen it in its butchered form, then do yourself a favor and take a look at the DVD. In this form it can take its place along side Victor Fleming's two most famous films, GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Joan of Arc is perhaps Bergman's finest "high acting" performances. (Her greatest performance is still her "minimalist" performance in "Casablanca"). This is a better than good movie, but not great. With the cast, it should have been GREAT! It is, however, well worth seeing; Bergman is in fine form.

"Joan of Arc" is a film with a much larger budget and more prestigious cast than you'd expect from a movie released by RKO. After all, RKO was clearly a second-tier studio whose output was far lower budgeted than most films from MGM, Twentieth Centure-Fox and Warner Brothers. But here, the studio released a prestige film...with vivid color, a LOT of familiar actors and a plot involving one of the great women of the late Middle Ages. Unfortunately, the public did NOT respond well to this and the film actually lost money. How?

Ingrid Bergman plays the title character and the story consists of her life from her middle teens to her execution at age 19. This is a SERIOUS problem, as when the film began she was about 15-16...and looked like the 33 years she actually was.

The other main problem with the film is that the filmmakers were too reverential towards the character...with dirge-like music and a pace slower than a snail! Telling it faster and with perhaps more behind the scenes intrigues would have helped. Regardless, I just kept wanting the film to speed up...particularly at the end when you KNOW what's going to happen and it takes too long to get there. Well made and nice looking...but also a film that might bore you as well.

By the way, although it didn't impact my viewing, the film was a pet project of Ingrid Bergman but she also was responsible for helping to tank the film. Negative publicity about her affair with a married man became public at about the time the film was released. This very unsaint-like behavior surely must have negatively impacted the box office numbers.

I am lucky enough to have a video of the uncut version of this film, in which the trial is shown in full. This is the part of the film in which we see Ingrid's best acting. It's so immensely moving! Ingrid believed in Joan and it shows. She had just come from a triumphant Broadway run in Joan of Lorraine, the play on which this movie is based. The movie is a more straightforward telling of Joan's story [the play is a play within a play] and I would say it's accurate, though some details have to be left out, due to lack of time. Sadly, Ingrid's popularity in the USA had waned when this film was released. What a tragedy! I am amazed that a so-called enlightened and free nation could turn against this honest woman, because of her love for an Italian film director and the birth [out of wedlock] of their beautiful son. I think Ingrid would have won another Oscar with "Joan of Arc", had it not been for the "scandal". It's definitely the best film version of this remarkable saint's story and a fulfilment of Ingrid's lifetime wish. Long live Ingrid Bergman - and her favourite saint! Mary Hutchings [Founder, Ingrid Bergman International, Yahoo clubs]

After what seems like gargantuan efforts to obtain the DVD and the necessary equipment I have finally managed to see the uncut version of Joan of Arc.

I am thrilled with this new DVD and will add nothing further to the positive comments that have already been made. However I should like to pay particular tribute to the wonderful music of Hugo Friedhofer. Of course, for years I loved his score for 'The best years of your life' but in terms of writing for an earlier period I never regarded this composer is quite the same league as, say, William Walton, whose Shakespeare/ Olivier scores were so memorable. But I have been forced to revise my opinion.

It was Max Reger who commented to the English composer Vaughan Williams: 'you have a veritable obsession with the flattened seventh' Well so, it seems does Mr Friedhofer! I suppose one either likes or loathes pastiche and modal writing. I adore it, and think that in Joan of Arc we get the best of both worlds. The music has a direct and powerful emotional appeal. It could scarcely fail to have. Yet given the fact that Friedhofer uses C20th conventions, harmonies, instruments and musicians, his 'nods' in the direction of C15th French church music are tastefully enough done for us to feel that such scenes as the coronation are, if not exactly in any sense 'authentic' then still marvellously effective.

I should dearly love to know whether anyone has arranged the score into a suite of pieces and recorded it. That would be a rare treat. Perhaps some other readers can advise?