A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
Few films have earned classic status more than Carl Dreyer's 1928 silent study of the 15th-Century teenager who helped lead French troops against the British only to be tried as a heretic.
– John Monaghan,
Detroit Free Press,
24 Mar 2006
fresh:
It is the gifted performance of Maria Falconetti as the Maid of Orleans that rises above everything in this artistic achievement.
– Mordaunt Hall,
New York Times,
25 Mar 2006
fresh:
Dreyer's most universally acclaimed masterpiece remains one of the most staggeringly intense films ever made.
– Tony Rayns,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
fresh:
Dreyer's radical approach to constructing space and the slow intensity of his mobile style make this "difficult" in the sense that, like all the greatest films, it reinvents the world from the ground up.
– Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Chicago Reader,
9 Feb 2007
rotten:
Here is a deadly tiresome picture that merely makes an attempt to narrate without sound or dialog an allegedly written recorded trial in the 15th or 16th century of Joan of Arc for witchery, leading to her condemnation and burning at the stake.