The Passion of Joan of Arc

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928)

Timing: 1:21 (81 min)

7.983/10
1073

8.019/10
12146

8.1/10
68000

All about film

Video 3

Photo 85

Actors and characters

Release date

1928-04-21

Country

France

Production

Société générale des films

Genre

Drama, History

Budget

$0

Revenue

$21 877

Website

Director

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Actors

Maria Falconetti, Eugène Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz, Antonin Artaud, Michel Simon, Jean d'Yd, Louis Ravet, Armand Lurville, Jacques Arnna
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Joseph Delteil

Producer

Operator

Rudolph Maté

Composer

Artist

Audition

Editing

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Marguerite Beaugé
All team (13)

• For the film, Carl Theodor Dreyer designed special sets with movable walls, which consumed the majority of the allocated budget. However, the sets are only visible in fragments in the footage, as the main focus is on close-ups of the characters.
• Work on the film lasted about a year and a half.
• During filming, none of the actors wore makeup, which was completely unprecedented at the time.
• According to the director's vision, the film should be shown without sound accompaniment, in complete silence.
• The film was banned from screening in the United Kingdom because English soldiers are depicted in it as sadists, tormenting Joan.
• The original film negative was lost in a fire, and Dreyer re-edited a new version from takes that he had previously rejected.
• Around 1950, French film scholar Lo Duca discovered fragments of the film in the Gaumont studio archives and created his own edit of the film with subtitles and music by Vivaldi, Albinoni, and other Baroque composers as accompaniment. This version provoked strong protests from Dreyer, who stated that Lo Duca's edit had nothing to do with the original editing of his film.
• For half a century, the original version of the film was considered lost; however, in 1981, a remarkably well-preserved, nearly complete copy of the original film with Danish subtitles was discovered in a storage room of a psychiatric clinic in Oslo, which became the basis for the restored version that exists today.
• In 1985, the French Cinémathèque released a restored version of the film, fully preserving the editing of the copy found in Oslo, with subtitles translated from Danish to French. For this version, composer Richard Einhorn wrote a musical accompaniment – the oratorio “Visions of Light” – in 1994.