Jeanne la Pucelle II - Les prisons

Sandrine Bonnaire captured my attention in this old early 90s movie which can give the impression that it's 60s or 70s something movie.

I was eight years old when the two part movie came out, but I only seen it this year. The story really is the most original of all the movies made about Joan of Arc, like Joan of Arc (1999) and The Messenger (1999), these movies couldn't compare to Jeanne la Pucelle. What's original, you hear the French speak French and the English speak English like it would have been at the time of the real Joan of Arc, the 1999 movies don't have that.

When Joan is burned to the stake, she's dressed like a priest (with some sort of pointy hat like the pope), holds her hands in prayer with a small cross in between, screams once for Jesus and the ending credits appear. As I watched this, I stood in front of my TV making the sign of the cross, it was a very sad part, but was the best ending in a Joan of Arcs movie do to the drama.

Amen !

What I said regarding Part 1 is still irrelevant for Part 2. Both films lack the ability of conveying the magnitude of events in France at that period. The relief of Orleans is said to have been an engagement involving around 15,000 soldiers but at no time do you feel it is more than a skirmish. When Joan, with a half-dozen soldiers in support, shouts up at the walls of Paris for its surrender I can only surmise that arrows were shot at her because no rotten fruit was available! Yes I know she probably had an army behind her but that's not the impression the viewer gets. Such events as heroic leaders leading mass armies into battle may have been clichéd by films like El Cid but they still stir the spirit. This film never does. The war of words that follow with her imprisonment and trial by the English lacked any intellectual substance. Interestingly the film does not portray the English as the villains.This is reserved for the duplicitous French noblemen. France created St.Joan and clearly accepts the blame for her demise which is the only message this film conveys.

My only major problem with Parts 1 and 2 of La Pucelle is that, historically, the guy who was the eminence gris and string-puller in the fight against La Pucelle and her final capture and trial is not in the movie. That guy is John of Lancaster the Duke of Bedford who was Regent of France at the time. Warwick,who is in the movie, was his puppet and enabled him to stay in the background while the worst things were perpetrated against La Pucelle inside and outside the courtroom.He is on record as regarding her as "the limb of the fiend" that is the devil's body part the worst calumny you could hurl at somebody in those days. Why Bedford was omitted from the movie and replaced by a stooge just beggars belief despite the fact that this was a French movie.It's like Hamlet without the Prince.Credit to a later movie 'Joan of Arc -The Messenger' that Bedford is nailed for his leading part.Clearly the definitive movie on La Pucelle remains to be made,although I consider that ,despite that strategic omission, La Pucelle remains a great movie and worth seeing.