By its nature as a silent film, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” shows how unnecessary some dialogue is. The selective use of intertitles leaves us with moments where we see characters moving their lips but are left to infer what they’re saying or absorb the emotional gist of it without hearing.
When Joan realizes her confession is tantamount to an act of apostasy and recants, her agony in the flames provides a discomfiting reminder that actual physical torture was a spectator event long before the rise of torture porn. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than be subject to a life of “perpetual imprisonment with the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction.”
“The Passion of Joan of Arc” puts focus, not just on Joan’s death, but on the violence that erupts as members of the crowd clash with authorities, who have just burned a living saint. The film’s path to preservation was fraught with real fires, which destroyed the original negatives, as if it were Joan herself and acts of God sought to dictate which version of it would survive. That Dreyer’s original cut was later found in a janitor’s closet in a mental hospital may only invite further reflection on the idea of the bicameral mind (more than just the “Westworld” season 1 finale title.)
In the 21st century, a woman like Joan might be viewed as disturbed, per “Saint Maud.” The turn-of-the-millennium film “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc,” notably left her to tango with her own godlike “Conscience” at the end rather than a true supreme being, per se. The rest of us are left to tango with Dreyer’s film, which remains as affecting and thought-provoking now as it ever was.
