The Trial of Joan of Arc (French: Procès de Jeanne d'Arc) is a 1962 historical film by the French director Robert Bresson. Joan of Arc is played by Florence Delay.
As usual in Bresson's mature films, The Trial of Joan of Arc stars non-professional performers and is filmed in an extremely spare, restrained style. Bresson's screenplay is drawn from the transcriptions of Joan's trial and rehabilitation.
Bresson's Joan of Arc is often compared with The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) by Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Bresson compared that film unfavorably with his own, expressing his
dislike of the actors' "grotesque buffooneries" in Dreyer's film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_of_Joan_of_Arc
Bresson rejected acting; he wanted his nonprofessional performers simply
to be, part of his notion of film as a pure art form. The script for
Joan of Arc adheres quite closely to the actual record of the trial and
of the rehabilitation process 25 years later: Joan is interrogated and
taken back to her cell repeatedly, the back-and-forth of the inquisition
and the clang of Joan's shackles providing the film's rhythm. Delay,
her limpid eyes frequently downcast, isn't "unexpressive" but
unsentimental; though austere, she is unwavering, resolute. In an
interview with Pipolo, Delay, who would go on to write novels, narrate Chris Marker's
Sans Soleil (1983), and be elected to the Académie Française in 2000,
explains that she thought of Joan "as an intrepid individual with a
mission to perform." She gave her director what he wanted, but gives
audiences more: a new way to access and appreciate history's most
remarkable adolescent visionary.
Melissa Anderson
http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-12-15/film/the-trial-of-joan-of-arc-at-anthology/
In Robert Bresson's third film he worked entirely
with
nonprofessional
actors in order to get more honest portrayals, a
practice he was to
follow
for the rest of his career which spanned 49 years but
only accounted
for
13 films. Even so, Bresson is considered the most
influential director
of France and one of the world's most revered
filmmakers. This austere
and ritualistic version of the trial of Joan of Arc is
considered the
most
accurate portrait of the trial on film, yet. It's
based on the minutes
and eyewitness accounts of Joan of Arc's trial.
Bresson gives the
viewer
a voyeuristic look at the psychological and physical
torture and
humiliation
that Joan underwent during the trial, showing how such
sado-masochistic
techniques were used to break her resolve and cause
her to eventually
recant
her testimony. She will change her mind again when she
decides it's
better
to die than live the rest of her life in an English
jail. In an
interview,
Bresson has said that Joan is someone he considers as
the most amazing
person in history.
The Trial of Joan of Arc is the story of the sincere
19-year-old
peasant girl, Joan the Maid (Florence Carrez) from
Domrémy, who
believed she had visions from God that told her to
recover her homeland
from English domination late in the Hundred Years'
War. After leading
her
troops successfully in battle and restoring the
monarchy to Charles
VII,
who received his coronation at Rheims, there were
court intrigues that
rendered her revolt against the government no longer
possible and after
her capture she was placed for four months in the
chateau of Beaurevoir
as a prisoner; Joan was transferred to the English and
spent seven
months
in their military jail located in a castle at Rouen
(the seat of the
English
occupation government) before put on trial in 1431.
The politically
motivated
trial lasted from February 21st through the end of
March. Joan is
manacled and spied upon through peepholes, as she sits
in a prison with
taunting British guards. The film opens with a
manacled Joan swearing
on
the Bible to tell the truth. The presiding judge is
the hostile Bishop
Cauchon (Jean-Claude Fourneau), considered to be an
Anglophile (he owed
his appointment to his partisanship with the English
government, who
financed
the entire trial). The court is eager for a quick
conviction on the
accused
heretic and witch to please the British authorities.
Joan is
cross-examined
by the bishop about hearing the voice of God, which
she says comes
through
the voices of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. There
are a long list of
charges over such things as she wore a mandrake around
her neck and
dressed
as a man. Joan argued if she wore a dress the English
guards would try
and rape her, which indeed happened when she donned a
dress.
Joan's convicted of heresy, as the bogus trial is
only
about getting
revenge--the transcripts show no proof of her guilt
was ever
established.
Bresson wisely lets the drama speak for itself, adding
no false
dramatics
or emotional outcries. It proves to be a richly moving
experience,
especially
the last shot of Joan in her purity being burned at
the stake. The film
won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival
of 1962.
Dennis Schwartz
http://homepages.sover.net/~ozus/procesdejeannedarc.htm
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.
Tom Newth
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059616/reviews?ref_=tt_urv
Saturday, 11 January 2014
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