“Oh Jeanne, to reach us at last, what
a strange path you had to take.”
Written/Compiled by Christopher S. Long
The construction of an elaborate set,
perhaps then the most elaborate in French film history, and six months of
grueling shooting in painstakingly-managed chronological order were
only the beginning of the struggle for Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928
silent masterpiece “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” Below is a
timeline of the film's release and the many twists and turns in its
perilous journey through nearly ninety years. Precisely none of this
is compiled from original research by me and I have listed my primary
sources below; they deserve all of the credit, especially the
detailed studies by T.A. Kinsey and Tony Pipolo.
I therefore do not post this as
scholarly or definitive work, but simply as a brief summary of the
research I have done in preparing my current class on the films of
Carl Theodor Dreyer, which I am currently teaching at the Bryn Mawr
Film Institute. I welcome all of my students who are checking in as
well as any other readers who have kindly taken the time to read my
humble little blog.
JOAN THROUGH THE AGES:
April 21, 1928: The film premiers in
Copenhagen. This initial release is believed to have been screened
silently (as this was Dreyer's stated wish) and had no credits at all
as Dreyer wanted viewers to feel as if they were peeping “through a
keyhole” at reality.
April 26, 1928: A free matinee
screening is opened to 1,800 unemployed workers who filled out
response cards, reportedly providing wildly enthusiastic feedback.
June 26, 1928: A press screening in
Paris which would normally be quickly followed by a public opening,
but French censors held up the film's permit, largely due to concerns
from Church officials in France as well as long-standing protests
from nationalist forces who objected to the film the moment a foreign
director was announced for a project about “our Joan.”
Oct 25, 1928: The film begins a
month-long run in Paris to substantially less enthusiasm than it
experienced at the initial Copenhagen release. It would play with a
score and with unauthorized cuts. A different version would be
released nine months later that was allegedly better received, but
the film would be a commercial flop in any version.
Dec 6, 1928: The negative had been
shipped to the UFA studio in Berlin for the film's German release,
but is destroyed in a fire. Dreyer immediately begins assembling a
second negative from alternate takes (fortunately he had many, many
takes, shooting at approximately a 40:1 ratio). Supposedly this
second version is a shot-for-shot match and only Dreyer and the
film's editor Marguerite Beauge could notice the difference. In 1929,
this second negative would be reported destroyed by fire in a French
studio. Dreyer's spirit was broken and he did not work on another
version of the film. Prints made from both negatives survived and
would assure that the film would continue to be seen, but these would
gradually deteriorate with each projection.
Mar-May 1929: The film plays in the
United States in a slightly shorter version. Like most versions, this
one was usually played with musical accompaniment and likely had
credits attached.
1929: The film's UK opening is delayed
for about a year as British censors object to the portrayal of the
British military in the film.
1933: One of the strangest of the many
different versions of “Joan” is released, one put together by
B-movie producer Sherman S. Krellberg (responsible for such films as
“Fighting Cowboy” and “City of Lost Men”). It would run
barely an hour, had no intertitles, and featured narration by radio
personality David Ross. It was advertised with the horrifying
tagline: “Sherman S. Krellberg Presents A New Thrill In Talking
Films.” According to author Tony Pipolo (1988), an advertisement
featured Krellberg's name more prominently than Dreyer's. Rights to
the film were already under dubious protection (if any) in certain
countries just a few years after its initial release.
1950-52: A negative of the film turns
up at Gaumont studios in France, possibly the one reported lost in
the second fire. This was handed over to the Cinematheque francaise
where film historian Joseph-Marie Lo Duca took charge of a
controversial re-release with a classical music score (the addition
of which required cropping a portion of the film along the left side
of the frame), some intertitles replaced by subtitles and some
remaining subtitles reprinted on backgrounds with stained-glass
windows and other Church imagery. It debuted at the 1952 Venice Film
Festival. Dreyer hated his version (“there are no words which can
express how Lo Duca has made my film on Joan of Arc banal”), but it
wound up being the one most often exhibited over the next 30 years in
many countries.
 |
| Joan with subtitles |
1960s: The Danish Film Museum works on
a 'best guess” print put together from the many different and
largely unauthorized prints in circulation at the time. The term
“best guess” has fallen under great scrutiny by film scholars.
These numerous prints include copies stored at MOMA, the National
Film Archive in London, one from an Italian private collector and
several others.
???: At some point, “Joan” lapsed
into public domain in the United States (I could not find the exact
dates this was the case). This meant the copyright had not been
renewed/defended and anyone could release the film, possibly with
many unauthorized alterations. This changed in 1994 with the
Uruguayan Round Agreements Act, and the film rights were protected in
the U.S. once again. This actually happened to quite a few films,
even major titles such as Fritz Lang's “Metropolis,” Carold
Reed's “The Third Man,” and Alfred Hitchcock's “The 39 Steps.”
1981: One final bizarre twist in one of
the strangest release stories of all. A custodian at an Oslo mental
asylum discovers a pile of film canisters in a cupboard. They are
sent to the Norwegian Film Institute where they sit for three years
until they can be processed by the staff. It turns out to be a
negative of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” still wrapped and with
the Danish censor's seal intact; it has no credits and has Danish
intertitles supervised by Dreyer. It is likely this print was ordered
by the hospital's director Dr. Harold Arnesen though it was obviously
never played.
There was considerable debate over just
how different this “Oslo print” was from prints already in
circulation (roughly summing it up: there are a few more shots, some
of which are of different lengths, but no major additions or
omissions; however even small differences cannot be ignored; most
importantly, the quality of this negative was quite good.) The Oslo
print, extensively restored by the Cinematheque francaise (who
replaced the Danish intertitles with French ones and added credits),
has now become the most commonly played one. It was the basis for the
Criterion Collection's 1999 release of “Joan” on DVD.
A Few More Fun “Joan” Facts:
Michel Simon is listed in the opening
credits of the film as playing Jean Lemaitre; you will find a similar
listing currently on IMDB. This is incorrect. Simon only appears in
one very brief close-up and is glimpsed in the background of another
shot. Simon would become a very famous French actor and it is
possible that any “mistakes” in later credits added to the film
were not corrected in hopes of attracting his fans to the movie.
While the version of “Joan” on the
Criterion DVD played the film at 24 frames per second, the film has
frequently been screened (at venues like The Anthology Film Archive
in New York City) at 18 fps, adding a considerable amount to its run
time (from 82 min to 110) and also providing challenges for any music
played to accompany it (if music is used). Film historians and
archivists plan to battle to the death over this exciting topic.
This Oslo print has 1517 total shots
(including 174 intertitles), about double the amount of the typical
Hollywood film of the era. Of these shots, fewer than 30 show the
same character from shot to shot (i.e. a character walking from one
part of the room to another), an unusual feature that contributes to
the jarring, disorienting sense many viewers get from this film.
Thanks to Casper Tybjerg and David Bordwell for doing the counting on
that.
 |
| Jane Wiedlin as the definitive Joan of Arc |
There have been many film versions of
“Joan of Arc” over the years, of course. The most interesting
comparison to Dreyer's film is Robert Bresson's “The Trial of Joan
of Arc” (1962). Bresson's version is as sober as Dreyer's is
occasionally ecstatic; check out a clip (sorry, no subtitles) here.
If I could sum up two differences between the films: first, Dreyer's
Joan looks up while Bresson's Joan looks down (I think this
observation comes from another critic though I recently mistakenly
remembered it as my own) and second, Dreyer presents the trial as an
outrage while Bresson seems to view it as yet another example of
people just being people, i.e. horrible to each other. The perfect
Bresson quote, “What you see as pessimism, I see as clarity.”
References:
David Bordwell, The Films of Carl
Theodor Dreyer (University of California Press, 1981).
T.A. Kinsey, “The Mysterious History
and Restoration of Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc',”
The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image
Archivists, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 94-107.
Tony Pipolo, “The Spectre of Joan of
Arc: Textual Variations in the Key Prints of Carl Dreyer's Film,”
Film History, Vol. 2, No 4, pp. 301-324.
Tony Pipolo, “Response to T.A.
Kinsey's article on Dreyer's 'Passion of Joan of Arc',” The
Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image
Archivists, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 2002), pp. 184-188.
Casper Tybjerg, commentary track on
Criterion's DVD release of “The Passion of Joan of Arc.”
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