Joan of Arc
Jeanne d’Arc, 1900, 10m19s
Star Film Catalogue Nos. 264-275
At the age of thirteen, while tending sheep, Joan of Arc is visited by Saints Catherine and Margaret, and then by Saint Michael, who orders her to free France from the English yoke and to lead the Dauphin to the French throne. She returns home in a trance-like state, but won’t cross the threshold. Her uncle tries to persuade her to stay in her native village, but she refuses and runs off. She reaches the fortified city of Vaucouleurs, and persuades the guard to admit her. She finds the garrison commander, Robert de Baudricourt, enjoying a wild party with his friends. Joan tries to convince him of her plan, and though he initially rubbishes the idea (and has to be restrained from throwing her out), but Joan persuades him to give her his sword and entrust his army to her. Orléans is freed from the English oppressor, and Joan leads a huge army through the town. On 17 July 1429, in the cathedral of Rheims, King Charles VII is blessed by Archbishop Regnault. Joan and her army try to break in to the castle of Compiègne. After a pitched battle, Joan is captured by the English. Her followers try to scale the castle, but to no avail. Joan awakes in a cell, where she has another visitation from Saint Michael, this time flanked by Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine. The jailer orders her to accompany him. On 15 March 1431, Joan is put on trial, with the indictment read by Bishop Pierre Cauchon. He orders her to sign a retraction of her claim to have heard voices. She refuses and throws the quill on the floor. In the market square at Rouen, a pyre is constructed, with a sign reading ‘Relapsed Heretic’. Flanked by Cauchon and his allies, Joan is tied to the post and burned. A soldier adds fuel to the fire, and falls to the ground, overwhelmed both by the smoke and by the magnitude of what he has contributed to. But Joan has ascended to heaven.
Despite being made as early as 1900, Georges Méliès’ Joan of Arc was in fact the second adaptation of the legend: Georges Hatot’s The Execution of Joan of Arc (Execution de Jeanne d’Arc) was made in 1897. However, with its ten-minute running time and eleven separate scenes, Méliès’ film was undoubtedly the first to attempt an overview of the entire saga, from the teenage Joan hearing voices to her military triumphs, capture and execution. In fact, when compared with the earlier multi-sequence The Dreyfus Affair (L’Affaire Dreyfus, 1899) and Cinderella (Cendrillon, 1899), the narrative of Joan of Arc is noticeably more coherent, with just one digression to a scene not featuring Joan (the blessing of Charles VII).
The title role was played by one Mademoiselle Calvière, with Méliès regular Jeanne d’Alcy as her mother, and Méliès himself in multiple roles. As with Méliès’ other longer-form films, there are a reasonable number of extras, though the primary justification for an otherwise interminable march-past through Orléans seems to be so that Méliès can convince us that he really had a cast of thousands at his disposal. In actual fact, his performers would exit the shot at the right of the screen, and would quickly dash behind the backdrop to reappear again on the left.
Other effects are more sophisticated, and are dotted throughout the film. The appearances of the various angels in the opening scene were achieved by a combination of dissolve and superimposition - not that much earlier, he’d have been forced to use a much cruder jump-cut. Saint Michael is sporting an animated halo, presumably a mechanical effect being cranked by an invisible underling. Later, Joan’s army lays siege to the castle of Compiègne (clearly visible as a painted backdrop, since it wobbles when a ladder is placed against it) before being captured and burned at the stake, an effect achieved by releasing lots of smoke and stencil-tinting the print so that it looks as though it’s glowing with unbearable heat. Finally, a gloriously kitschy conclusion in Heaven echoes the similar apotheosis that concluded Cinderella (1899).
But Joan of Arc also proved that Méliès was becoming increasingly sophisticated as a metteur en scène. In terms of film grammar, he’s still conceiving his film as a series of lengthy tableaux shot from a fixed camera position and mostly separated by dissolves, but the blocking and compositions make effective use of the frame (particularly in the festivities in Robert de Baudricourt’s castle, the siege of Compiègne and Joan’s trial and execution), and once the march through Orléans and the blessing of Charles VII have finished, the film moves at one hell of a lick. Presumably Méliès could rely on his audience’s familiarity with the story to get away with not providing too much background information, but even without prior knowledge it’s much clearer what’s going on here than was the case with the Dreyfus films. Other directors, notably Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928), Robert Bresson (The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1962) and Jacques Rivette (Jeanne la Pucelle, 1993), would probe far more deeply into the legend, but Méliès’ film deserves credit for being the first serious effort, and one that ranges rather wider than its director’s reputation as a trick-film specialist might suggest.
The print on Flicker Alley’s DVD starts off in dreadful condition, with the whole of the first scene marred by severe damage. However, things quickly improve, and much of the rest of the film looks ravishing, augmented by the stencil colours. This is the first of a handful of Méliès titles to feature a soundtrack narration, delivered in heavily accented French by Lobster Films’ Serge Bromberg. The decision to record it in English triggered knee-jerk complaints from purists, though in actual fact this is Méliès’ original text, written in English to make his films more accessible to the international marketplace. (His films on the Dreyfus Affair would certainly have benefited from something similar). The narration is accompanied by an electronic score from Brian Benison, which makes frequent use of a martial mode as Joan’s military victories pile up.
Links
- Internet Movie Database entry.
- Jshaide’s review (Rotten Tomatoes forum) - part one/part two
- Wikipedia on the real Joan of Arc.
Posted on 13th June 2008
Under: Mechanical Props, Historical Re-enactments, Superimposition, 1900, Dreams | 1 Comment »
12 August 1899. The court martial of Alfred Dreyfus at the Lycée in Rennes. The sergeant of the court strides up and makes an announcement. Colonel Jouast and the other judges arrive and take their seats, along with Maître Labori, Commandier Cordier and Adjutant Coupois. Dreyfus is then brought in, and Jouaust questions him. General Mercier, the first witness, enters, salutes the judges, and mimes that he’d like a seat. One is brought, and a debate ensues, which becomes heated to the point when Mercier leaps up and begins gesticulating. When he sits down, Dreyfus rises and makes a protest.
In terms of staging, this makes use of the same backdrop as that featured in Méliès’ previous film, 
Rennes, August 1899. Various journalists take their seats in the courtroom at the second court-martial of Arthur Dreyfus. Though the atmosphere is cordial at first, Arthur Meyer of the ‘Gaulois’ starts an argument with Madame Séverine of the ‘Fonde’. She leaps to her feet, and so do most of the other journalists, triggering a pitched battle with many laying about them with their sticks. Many participants flee when the gendarmes get involved, and the remaining reporters are subsequently expelled.
However, their altercation quickly spills over into all-out group violence, whose most immediately noteworthy point is that its visual treatment lacks Méliès’ usual careful staging that arranges the actors in clearly-defined planes. Here, it looks like a straightforward fight, and when it’s broken up, the various characters walk (or are bundled) towards and past the camera instead of exiting to the left or right. The result is much more three-dimensional and less “theatrical” than Méliès’ other films - of all the films in the Dreyfus cycle, this is the one that most closely resembles genuine actuality footage, the size of the cast and the amount of foreground action making it much less obvious that the backdrop is still a painted flat.
Rennes, 14 August 1899. Maître Labori (Alfred Dreyfus’s lawyer), Colonel Picquart (the man who unmasked the real forger), M. Gast (Mayor of Rennes) and an unidentified woman are walking near a bridge. They stop for a chat, and the woman leaves. A man creeps up behind them, behaving suspiciously, but although the trio notice him, they don’t think anything of it. They turn to walk across the bridge, whereupon the man draws a gun and shoots Labori twice in the back. He runs off, pursued by Labori’s companions. Labori lies on the ground in agony, trying and failing to attract the attention of two passers-by - but a third comes to his assistance, and calls for help.
In terms of mise en scène, the film’s action is played out against a backdrop of the bridge at Rennes, with another painted flat to the left creating a side alley for the would-be assassin to escape down. As in 
In the military prison at Rennes, Alfred Dreyfus is seated at a table poring over books. A guard enters and salutes him, indicating that there are people outside. Dreyfus asks him to show them in. His lawyers Edgar Demange and Fernand Labori enter and are greeted by Dreyfus prior to the three of them taking seats around the table. Dreyfus points out something in the book he was reading earlier, which leads to an animated conversation. He has just got up to show them another document when the guard re-enters to say that he has another visitor. It is his wife Lucie, and her friend Madame Havet. Clearly overwhelmed with emotion, the reunited couple embrace, prior to Dreyfus sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. 
So far so touching, but it went on to say: “Mme. Dreyfus issued from the prison in a state of collapse. She found her husband much aged, with beard and hair whitened, and body shrunk and stooped. She said Dreyfus knew nothing of the events of the past two years.” Presumably, French newspaper accounts proceeded on near-identical lines, because it seems clear that Méliès is trying to convey this impression in the final seconds of the film, when Dreyfus retreats into a world of his own and Lucie can offer no more than a comforting caress.
At Quiberon harbour, a military detachment waits beside a boat. They move into formation as the sailors emerge. One hands over some documents to the officer in charge, who inspects and approves them with a signature. Alfred Dreyfus then emerges from the boat and climbs ashore. He is surrounded by soldiers, who march him away.
A film like this, with its blatantly artificial atmosphere, would have been anathema to most of the key documentary pioneers. Many decades later, Ken Russell got into trouble with the BBC’s Huw Wheldon for proposing to use an actor in a 1961 documentary on the composer Sergei Prokofiev, a battle that took Russell some years to win because Wheldon felt that this approach was fundamentally dishonest. By contrast, Méliès had the advantage of being answerable only to himself, and of course the whole notion of a documentary as distinct from a fictional drama had yet to be established (as had the term ‘documentary’, which wouldn’t be coined for over two decades). Paradoxically, though, this is simultaneously the most “realistic” film of the Dreyfus series in terms of its interplay of its characters with the background elements, but also the most artificial in terms of the means that Méliès resorts to in order to create the desired impression. 
In a prison cell, Colonel Joseph Henry paces up and down before sitting at the table to write a letter. He seals and addresses it, then walks over to the bed. Halfway there, he turns round and retrieves a cut-throat razor from a leather bag on the floor. He opens it, then puts it down on the table. After a brief hesitation, he picks it up again, walks over to the bed and slits his throat. He slumps against the bed and then falls on the floor, blood soaking through his shirt. A guard opens the door, sees the scene and summons two colleagues. They examine the body while the first guard finds the letter.
Both this film and its immediate successor, 
1896. In a hut in the Devil’s Island stockade, Alfred Dreyfus is sleeping. Two guards walk in, one holding a lantern and some leg-irons. The other wakes him, and produces a written order, which he reads aloud. Dreyfus is clearly distressed by its contents, and pleads for mercy. However, the guards hold him down on his bed, fit metal bands round his ankles, attach them to the leg-irons and fix the latter to the bed. The guards quickly check the contents of the room and leave.
Curiously, one of the soldiers has been given a lot of business to do with the lantern - he’s constantly holding it up with the apparent intention of revealing important details. However, the ambient light in the cell is more than adequate, and the lantern doesn’t appear to be emitting any of its own: presumably the insensitive film stock of the time would not have been capable of registering a genuinely lantern-lit scene. So while this is arguably both a technical and a dramatic flaw (the soldiers’ gestures suggest an altogether more crepuscular environment), it’s a forgivable one under the circumstances.
Alfred Dreyfus, clad in white suit and helmet, paces up and down in a small prison stockade. He eventually sits down to read a book, but dashes it to the ground in frustration before holding his head in his hands. A guard enters and hands him a letter. Dreyfus attempts to engage him in conversation, but without success. After the guard leaves, Dreyfus reads the letter, but it does nothing to alleviate the gloom.
To emphasise this, two additional touches contribute to the overall effect. Firstly, the set (or backdrop) has been painted using Méliès’ usual foreshortened perspective, which here has the side-effect of intensifying the sense of being hemmed in (the backdrop, lighting and Dreyfus’s white suite all contribute to the impression of scorching heat). Secondly, the guard delivering the letter is walking with the aid of a stick, suggesting that he has either been invalided out of more conventional military duties or has sustained an injury in the course of his work at the prison.
France, late 1894. After consulting with colleagues, French Army officer Mercier du Paty de Clam orders an underling to bring Captain Dreyfus to him. Dreyfus enters and salutes, and du Paty de Clam orders him to sit down at the table. He takes out a piece of paper and dictates names to Dreyfus, who writes them down. When he has finished, du Paty de Clam accuses Dreyfus of being the author of the ‘bordereau’, the list of military secrets from which he was dictating. Dreyfus denies it. Du Paty de Clam indicates the revolver on the table, and turns his back. Dreyfus refuses to commit suicide. Du Paty de Clam’s colleagues escort him out of the office. 
The first film in the Dreyfus cycle started as Méliès meant to go on, presenting a sober, largely unsensationalised account of the initial investigation. This was conducted by French Army officer Mercier du Paty de Clam (1853-1916), later accused of being one of the key conspirators behind the plot to frame Dreyfus. Dreyfus is summoned to his office and du Paty de Clam asks him to take down a document, which turns out to be the notorious ‘bordereau’ (the film’s original French title translates as “the dictation of the ‘bordereau’”). Du Paty de Clam claims that the handwriting is a perfect match and - in the film’s one lurch into melodrama - signals to Dreyfus that he should commit suicide. Dreyfus proudly refuses to do so, and sets in train what may well be the cinema’s first genuine serial. To coin a phrase that Méliès himself eschews, To Be Continued…