The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Let me brace for the pitchforks.
The Passion of Joan of Arc routinely turns up near the very summit of the "greatest films ever made" lists, spoken of in hushed, reverent tones, and having finally sat down with it I find myself genuinely baffled by the fervour. This is a film I have been meaning to get to for years, half-expecting to be humbled by it. What I actually felt, sitting in the dark with it, was something closer to respectful bewilderment.
Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 silent, built from the transcripts of Joan's actual trial and played out largely in stark, unforgiving close-up, is unquestionably an important film. What I struggle with is the leap from important to great, at least as something to actually watch today. Those are two very different things, and I think the conversation around this film sometimes conflates them.
In fairness, the achievement is real and I would never argue otherwise. Renée Falconetti's central performance, all raw anguish and enormous, tear-filled eyes, is rightly famous. Dreyer's decision to shoot so much of the film in tight, unsparing close-up was startlingly radical for its day, and you can trace a clear line from it through to Hitchcock, through to Bergman, through to any filmmaker who has since discovered what a human face can carry on screen. As a piece of film history, its importance is beyond dispute.
But here is where I part company with the faithful. A silent film has to work today without the one tool most modern films lean on hardest, spoken dialogue, and to my mind some kinds of silent cinema survive that test far better than others. The great silent comedies still land with almost no allowance required. I recently had a brilliant time with The General and The Cameraman, because a beautifully timed gag, a perfectly executed piece of physical business, needs no words. The craft speaks directly to you across the decades. Silent drama asks a good deal more of a modern viewer, and Joan of Arc, for all Falconetti's intensity, is a long, static and frankly punishing sit. It leans on faces and title cards where a film today would hand me so much more to hold on to. I could see what it was doing far more clearly than I could ever feel it.
And feeling it, surely, is the whole point. This is a film about suffering and faith and the brutal mechanics of institutional cruelty. It should get under the skin. For stretches it did, particularly whenever the camera was simply resting on Falconetti's face and trusting her to do the work, which she absolutely can. But then a sequence would drift into staginess, or the pace would stall just as my attention was starting to catch, and I would find myself at arm's length again, admiring the architecture of the thing rather than living inside it.
I will gladly concede its place in the story of cinema while quietly declining to call it a masterpiece. I know I am in a small minority here, and I have no wish to talk anyone out of a film they treasure. If it moves you, that is wonderful, and I can see precisely why it might. It has the bones of something extraordinary. But a review has to be honest about the experience I actually had, and mine was one of respect rather than rapture: fascinated by what this film meant and held at arm's length by what it was to sit through.
Two and a half stars, and one of the rare occasions I have finished a canonised classic wondering what everyone else can see that I cannot. Dreyer would later make Vampyr, which I found a much stranger and more genuinely unsettling watch. Make of that what you will.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1928 | Watched: 2026-08-22
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · BFI Player · BFI Player Amazon Channel · BFI Player Apple TV Channel
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · Criterion Channel · FlixFling · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home · FlixFling
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home · FlixFling
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
