|
|
List Price: $39.95Amazon.com's Price: $29.99 You Save: $9.96 (25%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Now!
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 9780780022348
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, Silent, Special Edition, NTSC
ISBN: 0780022343
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 19, 1999
Running Time: 114 minutes
Sales Rank: 9465
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1928
Editorial Review:
Description:
With its stunning camerawork and striking compositions, Carl Th. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc convinced the world that movies could be art. Renée Falconetti gives one of the greatest performances ever recorded on film, as the young maiden who died for God and France. Long thought to have been lost to fire, the original version was miraculously found in perfect condition in 1981-in a Norwegian mental institution. Criterion is proud to present this milestone of silent cinema in a new special edition featuring composer Richard Einhorn's Voices of Light, an original opera/oratorio inspired by the film.
Amazon.com essential video:
Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc is as truly mythic as any film ever shot, its artistic achievement rivaled by its turbulent history. The focal point of controversy when released in 1928, the original film was lost for a half-century until an intact copy of Dreyer's original version was recovered in the early '80s.
Seeing Joan of Arc today remains a cinematic revelation, its approach to storytelling, set design, editing, and especially cinematography (by Rudolph Maté, who also shot Dreyer's visionary Vampyr) radical then, and still strikingly modern many decades later. Influenced by both German expressionist film and the French avant-garde, Dreyer's huge set was designed with asymmetrical doors, windows, and arches, through which Maté's camera moves along equally off-centered, even vertiginous, but fluid trajectories. Although the story is epic in its implications, the film is composed primarily of extreme close-ups, especially of Joan and her principal interrogator, Bishop Cauchon, and medium shots of small groups, often shot from low angles. Dreyer and Maté shot their cast in bright light, without makeup, giving each wrinkle, blemish, or tuft of hair sculptural detail.
For all its visual invention, however, Dreyer's film is most devastating in its central performance by Falconetti (née Renee Falconetti), a French stage actress who made her only screen appearance here--one critic Pauline Kael has suggested 'may be the finest performance ever recorded on film.' Through Falconetti, Joan's spiritual devotion, simple dignity, and suffering become utterly real; even without a dialogue track and only sparse inter-titles, the film achieves a fevered eloquence.
This meticulous restoration also includes composer Richard Einhorn's beautiful oratorio, Voices of Light, inspired by Dreyer's film and set to texts by women mystics from medieval and early-Renaissance Europe. A luminous work on its own, Einhorn's oratorio matches both the dramatic arcs and tremulous emotions of Dreyer's film, while its juxtaposition of choral and solo voices (with early-music vocal quartet Anonymous 4 evoking Joan herself) echoes the martyr's confrontation with the court. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The Reason Film Became An Art Form!
I saw The Passion of Joan of Arc first in a fuzzy video created by silent film buffs years ago. It was beautiful. When the Danish copy was found, I was thrilled. The local Dryden Theatre showed the film with the Danish subtitles years later while the film curator translated the title cards. The film was also accompanied with a piano film score. Since then, I have consider this one of the greatest films ever. If only Maria Falconetti made another film! But could it have ever compared to this ... Read More
Rating: - Saint Carl
A while back the Turner Classic Movie channel dedicated a day to the Director Carl Theodore Dreyer. I'd never heard of him before. I watched a couple of the film offerings and was captivated. I purchased four Dreyer films from Amazon. I'm glad I did. My favorite [personal bias] is 'Day of Wrath' but the 'Passion of Joan of Arc' is also wonderful and, considering that it is a 'silent' film it still speaks plenty loudly enough. Dreyer apparently searched for a time before he found his perfect 'Joan' ... Read More
Rating: - It's film, it's art, it's life; it's passion...
Probably one of my favorite films ever made, `La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc' is an extraordinary accomplishment in the world of motion picture cinema. It is silent, but it never lacks a voice; it is black and white yet never void of color; it is decades old yet never feels dated. `La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc' is a monumental landmark in the film world and is deserving of all the praise and admiration it has received from its loyal fans.
The film is quite simply the story of Joan of Arc, the troubled ... Read More
Rating: - Faces
Ingmar Bergman always thought that one of the most important features of a film were the faces of the actors. The face can reveal everything, including the fact that the person behind it is trying to conceal something. So in Bergman's films, there typically are long shots of actors' faces, shots in which the viewer is invited to look beneath the mask.
Carol Theodor Dreyer must've had the same intuition when he directed "The Passion of Joan of Arc." Often judged (correctly, I think) to be the best ... Read More
Rating: - An Astonishing Revelation
This beautiful restoration of Dreyer's unwavering focus on telling a tale of corruption versus purity gave us a profoundly insightful look into one of history's most intriguing women and the church that sought to destroy her. Dreyer's brilliant use of an off-perspective set, unflinching close-up shots, and fast-paced editing reinforce the central story of an off-kilter religious establishment threatened by and unwilling to embrace true grace. He obviously hit his mark, because the religious establishment of the ... Read More
|
|
