The Faces of Joan: Cinematic Representations of Joan of Arc

Yervasi | The Faces of Joan: Cinematic Representations of Joan of Arc Carina Yervasi University of Michigan The Faces of Joan: Cinematic Representations of Joan ofArc Renée Falconetti, as the imprisoned Joan, wears the thorny crown put on her head by hertormenting English captors in La Passion deJeanne d'Arc(Can Theodor Dreyer, 1928). 8 I Film & History The Medieval Period in Film | Special In-Depth Section There is nothing in the world comparable to the human face. It is a terrain that one never tires of exploring, a landscape Joan of Arc, beloved character of the great directors. Carl Theodor Dreyer1 Frédéric Strauss2 Joan ofArc has no face. Or, in truth, so many faces now that one cannot stop to count them all. Nadia Margolis's attempt in 1990 to catalogue more than fifteen hundred bibliographic items regarding Joan ofArc in general, including some thirty-eight film titles, is the most abundant example of the desire to gain access to the visage ofJoan ofArc.3 Each trace, mark, and cross-reference leads to myriad other sites in the quest for ultimate referentiality, and, I suppose, to the equally impractical task of remembering or embodying all that Joan ofArc now signifies, with her attendant political and religious dangers and ironies. There are many problematic uses of the history and image ofJoan ofArc. They range from her proclamation that the king serve as divine lieutenant, reinforcing the dynasticism of the French monarchical state, to contemporary associations of her image with the French Right equating Joan The Maid's bodily purity with national purity. Joan ofArc has been deployed as a figure of demonic power by Shakespeare, passed through the ranks of the Bonapartists, and stripped clean of her "transgressive " cross-dressing by Vichy government schoolbooks .4 Joan of Arc has been depicted as witch, saint, country girl, and battlefield heroine in visual cultural production throughout the centuries since her burning at the stake. It is no surprise, then, to find renewed interest in her story in film. Yet I would argue that the cinematic reproductions ofJoan of Arc have as little to do with the Middle Ages or Joan of Arc's culture as do most recreations ofher story; all are relegated to the ideologically charged realm of representation. Among her many portrayals within the rich iconic tradition are peasant girl images like François Rude's 1852 sculpture ofJoan "hearing voices" and the statue depicting a praying, seated Joan at Domrémy by H. M. A. Chapu, as well as the feminized heroic soldier in Ingres's nineteenth-century painting ofJoan in the cathedral at Reims (complete with split skirt showing off a leg ofheavy armor) and Haskell Coffin's fully armored and sword-wielding Joan ofArc hawking World War I U.S. Savings Stamps to the "Women of America." Even the actresses now famous for their roles as Joan contribute to and complement the permanence of the Joan of Arc iconic tradition. The images ofJoan ofArc are prolific. One kind ofvisual reproduction however stands out as the most arresting—this is the cinematic face ofJoan ofArc. Here, I wish to consider the function of the face and, by extension, the body ofJoan ofArc by addressing the images of several actresses and their roles as Joan ofArc in films of her heroic deeds and/or trials. I have found it advantageous to examine Joan ofArc films in the "lives of saints" hagiographie tradition, and thus I will also direct my comments to contexts and conventions of film production that use the elements of this genre. As Joan ofArc films are too numerous for a short study, I have chosen the following examples because the narratives conform closely to the conventions of the historical genre or because the actresses in them best represent extreme differences and similarities within the corpus ofJoan of Arc films: Géraldine Farrar, Joan the Woman (Cecil B. DeMiIIe, 1917); Renée Falconetti, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928); Ingrid Bergman, Joan ofArc (Victor Fleming, 1948); Jean Seberg, Bernard Shaw's SaintJoan (Otto Preminger, 1957); Florence Carrez, Le Procès deJeanne d'Arc (Robert Bresson, 1962); and Sandrine Bonnaire, Jeanne La...