The Passion of Joan of Arc (found silent French film; 1928): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:49, 26 January 2019

This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its lack of concrete references.

Film poster.

Status: Found

Date found: 1981

Found by: Unknown

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a 1928 silent French film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. It was incredibly influential and innovative for its time, pioneering new shot types like close-ups. The film chronicled the events of the final days of Joan's life leading up to her execution. The dialogue was taken primarily from her court records. To this day, it is considered one of the most powerful and impressive films of its time.

It also contains what is often considered to be cinema's greatest onscreen performance: Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan of Arc. It is often rumored that she got so into acting that she had to be briefly institutionalized for believing she really was Joan of Arc.

The film went through a long and troubled production. Dreyer, a perfectionist, demanded several takes of scenes. Dreyer slaved over hours of raw footage to create his vision of the perfect film. However, the film was met with controversy upon release.

Many theaters refused to screen the film because it portrayed members of the British church so starkly. As such, very few copies of the film were created. It became one of the first films to be destroyed due to its silver nitrate composition in many studio fires, with the final known copy having been destroyed in 1929 in a lab fire.

The film was re-made using spare footage, and alternate takes in 1933 into a briefer 61-minute version. Considered vastly inferior to the original, the film was mostly only shown to people for educational purposes.

Dreyer passed away in 1968, thinking that his masterpiece would forever be lost. However, by a stroke of luck, a pristine condition 35 mm nitrate print was discovered in the storage closet of the Dikemark Mental Hospital in Norway in 1981. The film was sent to the Norwegian Film Institute where it was stored for a period of time. Technicians at the Institute finally examined the film in 1984 and determined that the print contained Dreyer's original cut. The film was restored in 1985 and is now available on various forms of home video.

Many musical compositions, most notably Richard Einhorn's "Voices of Light," are known to accompany the film today. "Voices of Light" is now acclaimed as one of the greatest film scores of all time. However, some may prefer to watch the film in total silence, as Falconetti's performance and the passion in the film is considered among cinema's most captivating.

External Links

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-[[File:Passionarc.jpg|thumb|215px]]
+{{NeedingWork|lack of concrete references|Passion of Joan of Arc}}
-'''''The Passion of Joan of Arc''''' is a 1928 silent French film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. It is incredibly influential, pioneering the use of close-ups, particularly without makeup. The film cronicled the events of the final days of Joan's life, leading up to her execution. The dialogue was taken almost verbatum from her court records. To this day, it is considered one of the most depressing movies to sit through, often surpassing ''United 93'', ''Requiem for a Dream'', and ''Schindler's List'' as far as movies that the viewer is often left too uncomfortable to watch again.
+{{InfoboxFound
+|title=<center>The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)</center>
+|image=Passionarc.jpg
+|imagecaption=Film poster.
+|status=<span style="color:green;">'''Found'''</span>
+|datefound=1981
+}}
+'''''The Passion of Joan of Arc''''' is a 1928 silent French film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. It was incredibly influential and innovative for its time, pioneering new shot types like close-ups. The film chronicled the events of the final days of Joan's life leading up to her execution. The dialogue was taken primarily from her court records. To this day, it is considered one of the most powerful and impressive films of its time.
-It also contains what is often called cinema's greatest onscreen performance: Renee Jean Falconetti as the title character. It is often rumored that she got so into her method acting that she had to be institutionalized for a short while because she really believed she was Joan.
+It also contains what is often considered to be cinema's greatest onscreen performance: Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan of Arc. It is often rumored that she got so into acting that she had to be briefly institutionalized for believing she really was Joan of Arc.
-The film went through a long and troubled production. Dreyer, a perfectionist, demanded several takes of scenes and his sets he demanded to be flawless. The film had loads of raw footage that Dreyer slaved over to create his vision of the perfect movie to tell Joan's story. Unfortunately, though, the film was blasted with controversy upon release.
+The film went through a long and troubled production. Dreyer, a perfectionist, demanded several takes of scenes. Dreyer slaved over hours of raw footage to create his vision of the perfect film. However, the film was met with controversy upon release.
-Because the film portrayed members of the British church in a rather unflattering light, many theaters refused to screen it. This led to very few copies of the film existing to begin with. It became one of the first films to be destroyed due to it's silver nitrate composition in many studio fires, with the final known copy having been destroyed in 1929 in a lab fire.
+Many theaters refused to screen the film because it portrayed members of the British church so starkly. As such, very few copies of the film were created. It became one of the first films to be destroyed due to its silver nitrate composition in many studio fires, with the final known copy having been destroyed in 1929 in a lab fire.
-The film was re-made using spare footage of alternate takes and camera angles into a 61 minute version in 1933. Often considered vastly inferior to the original, the film was mostly only shown to people for educational purposes. The movie was then taken many times and altered by various companies. Many of these altered versions include awkward voice dubbing, narration, subtitles explaining everything that was going on, and even strange inclusions of unrelated scenes from other movies.
+The film was re-made using spare footage, and alternate takes in 1933 into a briefer 61-minute version. Considered vastly inferior to the original, the film was mostly only shown to people for educational purposes.
-Dreyer died disappointed that his masterpiece was long thought lost. Then, a miracle happened in 1981 when a janitor found an odd, prestine film reel of the original film in a Swedish mental hospital. It is often theorized and joked that for years the only people who were seeing the "true" version of the film for decades were insane and suicidal people. The movie was restored painstakingly over the course of a year and finally shown to a crowded theater in 1982.
+Dreyer passed away in 1968, thinking that his masterpiece would forever be lost. However, by a stroke of luck, a pristine condition 35 mm nitrate print was discovered in the storage closet of the Dikemark Mental Hospital in Norway in 1981. The film was sent to the Norwegian Film Institute where it was stored for a period of time. Technicians at the Institute finally examined the film in 1984 and determined that the print contained Dreyer's original cut. The film was restored in 1985 and is now available on various forms of home video.
-The film is now famous for it's numerous musical compositions, most notably Richard Einhorn's "Voices of Light". It is now acclaimed as one of the greatest film compositions of all time and has even been analyzed in ways that only Beethoven's 9th and ''Rite of Spring'' have ever been analyzed. The film is highly recommended to be viewed with either that score, or in entire silence, letting the movie on it's own captivate the viewer.
+Many musical compositions, most notably Richard Einhorn's "Voices of Light," are known to accompany the film today. "Voices of Light" is now acclaimed as one of the greatest film scores of all time. However, some may prefer to watch the film in total silence, as Falconetti's performance and the passion in the film is considered among cinema's most captivating.
-[[Category:Lost films]]
+==External Links==
+*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc A Wikipedia article on ''The Passion of Joan of Arc''.]
+*[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019254/ The IMDb page on ''The Passion of Joan of Arc''.]
+[[Category:Found media|Passion of Joan of Arc]]
+[[Category:Pre-LMW|Passion of Joan of Arc]]
+[[Category:Historic|Passion of Joan of Arc]]