The Lark

"The Lark" was a Broadway play that was brought to television as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame productions. Unlike a lot of plays that are brought to TV or the screen, this one actually retains most of the same actors--such as Julie Harris and Boris Karloff.

The play is a dramatization of the trial of Joan of Arc as well as a few flashback scenes. Julie Harris plays Joan and she is quite earnest in the role--perhaps a bit too earnest at times. In fact, this is the problem with the production--the other that it comes off as a bit too heavy-handed at times--particularly at the end. Still, I enjoyed the play and like that it was done in more modern language than some of the films about the same people and incidents. Worth seeing but far from a must-see.

If you are interested in seeing it, it's available for free download from archive.org--a repository often linked to IMDb. Also, you will notice on this file that the original Hallmark ads are still there--and they seem amazingly lame as the unseen narrator reads the cards (again and again and again) with his rather boring delivery.

There was a flurry of interest in Joan Of Arc in the mid 1950s. Anouilh's 1953 play Alouette is the source for this now timely record of the recently deceased Julie Harris' 1955 Broadway role. Also in 1953 Roberto Rossellini began a series of performances in Europe with his wife Ingrid Bergman of Arthur Honegger's 1933 oratorio on Joan which he later turned into a film with her, released in 1955. Finally, Otto Preminger presented a controversial movie of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan in the summer of 1957, starring an unknown, Jean Seberg. Of these the Seberg rendition is the weakest as she was a novice, Bergman and Rossellini's version offers the spirituality they brought out in each other, and beautiful music.(Bergman had played Joan previously in a 1948 Hollywood epic.) I'm not sure how much of The Lark is lost in the adaptation (credited to Lillian Hellman) of Anouilh's French, but the quality of the acting that was offered regularly to Hallmark Hall Of Fame viewers was high.Harris adds a degree of sweetness,innocence, and a certain tomboy quality to her interpretation.

Well-acted by an usual cast including Eli Wallach, Jack Warden and Boris Karloff.

Actually Karloff comes off the best and well-deserved his Tony nomination for the Broadway production.

The others unfortunately don't come off as well, with Warden and Wallach unlikely choices for there roles. And the usually reliable Harris is way over the top and much too theatrical for a TV film, but one can chalk it up to unfamiliarity with the medium. Rathbone has a nice little part as the Inquisitor.

Generally it's well directed by the reliable Schaeffer.