Il processo di Giovanna d'Arco

This is a magnificent rendition of the trial of Joan of Arc (Florence Delay in his only acting); as after the successful liberation of Orléans and Reims , the Dauphin can be crowned traditionally in the cathedral of Reims - and does not need her anymore, since his wishes are satisfied. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission . Jeanne d'Arc gets set up in his trap and is imprisoned by the Burgundians. In a trial (presided by bishop Cauchon well played by Fournier) against her under English law, she can't be forced to tell about her divine visions she has had continuously since childhood. Being condemned of witchcraft and being considered as relapsed heretic, she is sentenced to death . Jeanne d'Arc is burnt alive in the marketplace of Rouen on May 30th, 1431, at only 19 years of age .

This excellent film by Robert Bresson was based entirely on the transcripts of the real-life trial , adapted in theatrical fashion ; concerning Joan's imprisonment, interrogation and final execution at the hands of the English . Joan excellently played by Florence Delay asserted that she had visions from God , Saint Catalina , Saint Margarita and Angel St Michelle that instructed her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. Although the story takes place in 1431, Jeanne's hairstyle is strictly a popular mode of the early 1960s. This is not a "goof" but an intention on the director's part to help young people identify with the character. It was shot in a spare , too serious and low-key style . Runtime movie is short , approx. 65 minutes , but is neither boring , nor dull but thought-provoking . The ending scenes in which she's condemned is very interesting and the sentence at the burning pole is overwhelming .

Other films about this historic character are the following : TV version (1999) with Lelee Sobieski , Neal Patrick Harris as Charles VII , Peter O'Toole as the Bishop , Powers Boothe , Olimpia Dukakis and Peter Strauss ; Joan of Arc (1999) by Luc Besson with Milla Jovovich , Tchéky Karyo as Dunois , John Malkovich as Charles VII and Toby Jones ; Saint Joan (1957) by Otto Preminger with Jean Seberg , Richard Widmark , Richard Todd and John Gielgud ; Joan of Arc (1954) by Roberto Rosselini with Ingrid Bergman ; Joan of Arc by Victor Fleming (1948) with Ingrid Berman , J Carrol Naish , War Bond and Jose Ferrer as Charles VII . Furthermore , silent adaptation such as the classical La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928) by Carl Theodor Dreyer with Maria Falconetti and Joan The woman (1916) by Cecil B Demille .

The movie was set in ¨Hundred years war¨ developed between 1337 and 1453 (downfall date of Constantinopla by Turks). The historical deeds are the following : Henry V vanquishes Charles VI in Agincourt (1415) that was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War . The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 and Henry V takes over on Normandy . Charles VI of France signs ¨Troyes treatise¨ in which Henry V is wedded to Charles's daughter . Later on , Henry VI of England proclaims himself king of France but then Joan of Arc proclaims in Bourges to Charles VII as king , after being crowned in Reims . She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Joan of Arc acting as a divine mission defeats English army in Orleans .Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation and settled the disputed succession to the throne . But she's captured by the Burgundians and is handed over to English authorities and they fire her for heretic and witch in Rouen.

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 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.

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.

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.