FILMS OF THE SPIRIT

Curated by Rajiv Mehrotra

 

The Passion of Joan of Arc (110 min; 1928; dvd; b/w; silent)

Director: Carl Th. Dreyer

 

Recipient of the NBR Award for Top Foreign Films, National Board of Review, USA 1929; and OFTA Film Hall of Fame for Motion Picture, Online Film & Television Association 2010 

 

Dreyer's most universally acclaimed masterpiece remains one of the most staggeringly intense films ever made. It deals only with the final stages of Joan of Arc's trial and her execution, and is composed almost exclusively of close-ups: hands, robes, crosses, metal bars, and (most of all) faces. The narrative of this profound and passionate film constitutes a double struggle: one between Joan and her captors (the English army and the French clergy) and the other within her own self

 

(Collaboration: Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama; and National Film Archive, Pune)