The symbol of Joan of Arc continues to be appropriated by everyone in France: the National Front, anti-clericals, monarchists, feminists, Catholics, and Protestants. In order to use the myth of the Virgin of Orléans for the needs of a political movement, it is enough to put the accents in her biography differently. It is thanks to this that her golden equestrian statue on Place des Pyramides in Paris has the status of the most revered monument in the whole country, and the legendary La Pucelle is the main character of at least a dozen feature films. During the NFM organ cinema, we will show the most important of them – a silent, black and white production from 1928 entitled The Passion of Joan of Arc.
When in the 1920s, the French Société Génerale des Films commissioned Carl Theodore Dreyer to make a film about one of the most important figures in French history, the Danish director was given a choice of three: Joan of Arc, Catherine de Medici, and Marie Antoinette. Deeply religious, though far from any orthodoxy, the director chose as the main character of his new film the Virgin of Orléans, canonized a few years earlier by Pope Benedict XV and proclaimed the patroness of France. Then, for a year and a half, he researched her story and, based on fifteenth-century trial documents, created a scenario for the movie, in which he focused on the last day in the life of Joan.
The film he made, the last silent film in his oeuvre, is considered the apogee of the artistic potential of this type of cinema. The Danish director decided that what distinguished cinema from theatre was the work of the camera, which is why the most important means of expression was the faces of Joan, her accusers and torturers, filmed close-up, without make-up, in a white, almost abstract space. In the role of Joan, Dreyer cast the theatre actress Renée Falconetti, who thanks to this performance, despite her playing in only two films in her life, landed in cinema history books.
The moving image of the last day of Joan of Arc’s life during the show in the Main Hall of the NFM will be accompanied by live improvisations performed by Franz Danksagmüller, a German organist and composer. The lecturer of the Musikhochschule Lübeck will enrich the sound of the organ with the use of electronics.