Joan of Arc () is a 1900 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès, based on the life of Joan of Arc.
Plot
In the village of Domrémy, the young Joan is visited by Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, who exhort her to fight for her country. Her father Jacques d'Arc, mother Isabelle Romée, and uncle beg her to stay at home, but she leaves them and travels to Vaucouleurs, where she meets with the governor, Captain Robert de Baudricourt. The dissipated Baudricourt initially scorns Joan's ideals, but her zeal eventually wins him over, and he gives her authority to lead French soldiers. Joan and her army lead a triumphal procession into Orléans, followed by a large crowd. Then, in Reims Cathedral, Charles VII is crowned King of France.
At the Siege of Compiègne, Joan is taken prisoner while her army attempts to storm the castle. In prison, Joan has another dream in which she sees her visions again. Taken to the interrogation, Joan refuses to sign a retraction, and is condemned as a heretic. In the Rouen marketplace, Joan is burned at the stake. The wood carrier at the execution, bringing in fuel for the burning, dies on the spot from the fumes. In a final apotheosis scene, Joan rises to heaven, where she is greeted by God and the saints.
Cast
- Jeanne Calvière as Joan of Arc. According to a later account by Georges Méliès, Calvière was principal dancer at the Trianon-Lyrique in Paris and performed under the Italianized stage name “Mlle Calviéri”. For the Battle of Compiègne horseback scene, she was replaced by an unnamed equestrian from the Cirque d'Hiver. Méliès further stated that Calvière remained part of his troupe for nineteen years.
- Georges Méliès in seven roles: Jeanne's father; Jeanne's uncle; Robert de Baudricourt; a beggar at the Orléans procession; a soldier at the Siege of Compiègne; one of Joan's jailers; and the wood carrier at the execution. It was the first of Méliès's films to surpass 200 meters in length, and the second (after his Cinderella the previous year) to use changes of scene, with twelve sets employed and that number of scenes, or tableaux, advertised. was the set painter for the film. The cameraman was Leclerc,
Méliès's scenario for the film strongly emphasizes Joan's status as a national hero of France and a martyr for the French people; the first scene, in which Joan enters leading a flock of sheep, foreshadows her eventual leading of the French army. The final scene, with its triumphal entry of Joan into heaven and her meeting God, suggests Joan's suitability for Catholic sainthood. (Joan of Arc was beatified by the Church in 1909 and canonized in 1920.)
Most of the film is staged in Méliès's usual theatrical style, with a stationary camera viewing the action from afar, in a long shot, as if viewing a stage spectacle from a seat in the audience. However, the eighth scene, the Siege of Compiègne, is notable for a more modern-looking visual effect: in that scene, actors move much closer to the camera, in the distance of a medium shot. This is the second example, among Méliès's extant films, of experiments with medium shots; the first had occurred the previous year in Bagarre entre journalistes, an installment of Méliès's series The Dreyfus Affair. American film piracy became such a problem for Méliès, especially after the success of his much-pirated 1902 film A Trip to the Moon, that he opened an American branch of his company in New York in 1903, under the direction by his brother Gaston Méliès, for added copyright protection.
The film was believed lost until 1982, when a hand-colored print with the first scene missing was discovered by the collector René Charles.
See also
- Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc
- List of films about angels