Il processo di Giovanna d'Arco

A superb demonstration of Bresson's talent as one of the last century's greatest film-makers. It is a short film, set minimally in a courtroom, then Joan's cell and finally, with immense power, at the stake. The actors are amateurs, as usual with Bresson, but the message they convey is universal - and as relevant to the 21st century as to the 15th century, when the events, realistically described in the film from court texts, took place.

Was Joan really a freedom-fighter and a saint, receiving messages from God through her saintly visions? Or was she a 15th century terrorist, opposing both the power of the English occupying army and the tenets of the Catholic Church and its bishops? As the trial is enacted, there are no obvious villains - not even the English officer representing the occupying secular power. And Joan needs to be discreetly prompted by a white-clad priest, whose motives are obscure, casting some doubts on the certainties of her visions. The triumph of the director and the actors is that you feel that the viewer is totally involved in the interactions - and I had to rush to the history books to learn more about the main characters as soon as the film finished.

This is the one Bresson allegedly made in response to Dreyer, though not sure if that was the real impetus or something said along the way to mark intentions. I can see how the project would appeal greatly to him; like his three previous ones, it's about an idealistic youth faced with a world that stifles the spirit. He must have felt it so apt that he could use actual transcripts of the trial kept by the notaries at Rouen.

He films the trial as a process of facts, no flourish allowed anywhere, sparse and all the other things you'll read in comments, and all this as asceticism that purifies the eye, or so it goes. Dreyer's Joan was assailed by passions so overwhelming they escaped the body to rend the cinematic air. Huge contrast with Bresson's who is stoic and dispassionate, the air is static, everything is kept in body.

One specific impetus behind the project I believe may hav been how to have the portrait of this woman, induce as much deliberate poverty of expression, and still give us a soul? He does it I think. He gives us a Joan who is indomitable, but also afraid, proud without losing her sweetness, glimmers of unsure innocence through the armor of god. He's gifted with a woman as marvelous as Dreyer had.

It was an ongoing project for Bresson that stretched back several films, he surpasses them here in complete austerity. He was probably a happy camper looking back.

But more than any individual film, it's his philosophy of purity that I feel is worth examining, and I'm in the middle of a few posts where I grapple with it. He was writing along the way a book that delineates this philosophy. It was seeing quotes from this book for years that prompted me to follow up on the films, it was something I've always had in the back of my mind tied to personal observations about emptiness and purity.

I won't have conclusions before Balthazar, which is next in line, and probably the one after, but there is something to say here.

We say that Bresson is pure, but if you look up close, there's a method. It's one of timing and blocking exact pieces, this extends from the camera to the actors, who become pieces to be moved. What he's doing is that he's taking the language of film and breaking it down to the most basic grammar. I see this as both an intellectually barren project to pick, why all your work will just be simplifying, and it sets you down a slippery slope where the only thing purer is is simple.

Bresson makes a lot out of the importance of stillness, but at the center I perceive another notion; he writes that he wants nothing false, nothing that the eye doesn't see. It's a grammarian's insistence on what is true, or seems so at this point, a dogmatist's claim on reality. How about all that we don't see but can feel move through us? He deliberately mutes this in the actors.

And in the film we have what? A young girl who is full of inner things she feels, god or madness it's the same courage for her, faced with a cadre of clerics who set out to disprove it all as impure, the devil's work. What's happening during the trial is that these dogmatists are trying to corner Joan into saying that she saw what the eye doesn't see, the abstract in the world of senses, which is what Bresson is working against.

(From a Christian view, it would be heretic to say that the divine was bound thus and so, and you were privy of that form)

Were the saints clothed? Did St. Catherine have her hair down?

Grammarians of spirituality.

Now the task is open. More interesting than the actual films for me is this battle in Bresson, between the grammarian of spirituality with his fixed notions on the divine and Joan who wants to preserve the truth of what she felt. Is the world full of presence? Balthazar is up next.

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.

it is the main virtue. based by original documents of trial, the film is a cold portrait of Jeanne. minimalist, convincing, blank, without the ingredients of dramatization. a form of docudrama ? not exactly. a form of exposure of director faith ? almost. because the film is a confession, no doubt. but one escaping to expectations. sure, it reminds La Passion de Jeanne d 'Arc by Dreyer . but differences are significant not only for different styles or ages but for the common points. because the same source has the different way to a message who ignores, in the case of this Jeanne, at the first sigh, the technique solutions. so, an useful film.

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.