The Sheila Variations

I must see this. That's it.

Posted by: tracey at March 4, 2007 8:57 PM

Yep. I came in the house and turned on the tv and it was on. I sat down and stared until it was finished. I don't think I moved until it was over.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 4, 2007 11:43 PM

Okay, so you know I am a complete and utter Joan of Arc fanatic. So, now watch the movie while listening to Voices of Light, Richard Einhorn's oratorio. It is AWESOME. It's beautiful music on its own, but when seen with the film that inspired it you will be blown away. I saw it on the big screen accompanied by the oratorio at Lincoln Center and it was unforgettable.

Posted by: Kerry at March 5, 2007 12:33 AM

I think I should brush up on my French before seeing the movie, so that I can understand it.

;)

Posted by: JFH at March 5, 2007 9:40 AM

No, there are subtitles, JFH! No worries. Although sometimes there aren't - but that's usually when she's saying stuff like "Oui".

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 9:48 AM

Kerry - you know I remember your passion for this movie - I remember you telling me about it years ago but I am just getting to it now. I would so love to see it on a huge screen - the close-ups of all of those faces are just intense! She is unbelievable. I can't even call it acting. It is experiential. Truly amazing.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 9:49 AM

Also, JFH - the acting is so clear, so true - that you wouldn't need subtitles anyway. It's all body language and close-ups. Phenomenal.

This movie was really the first to utilize close-ups in how we understand them, as modern film-goers. Close-ups are the equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy or an aside. An entrance into the intimate psychology of a character.

This film is done mostly all in close-up - I can't even describe how riveting it is.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 9:56 AM

tracey - you, of all people, are going to flip OUT. Let me know when you see it.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 10:12 AM

I'll have to see about getting this...although I got so wrapped up in schoolwork last night I completely forgot to watch Battlestar Galactica, so when I'd actually sit down and watch it is anyone's guess. I'd like to measure Maria Falconetti's performance (yeah, like I'd have a yardstick other than subjective preference, heh) against my personal all-time favorite--José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac.

Posted by: Ken at March 5, 2007 10:15 AM

I wouldn't suggest watching it trying to see if it measures up to anything else. You'll miss the experience of it.

(and I, too, love love love Jose Ferrer.)

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 10:23 AM

Hi Sheila,

I was hoping you would write about this film, because I saw it for the first time recently and was not sure what I thought about it. It definitely remains a striking innovation, unlike anything before and like very little afterward. And I agree with Kerry; the Einhorn music is stunning. There were two things, though, that made me uneasy about the film. One was that the viewer's point of view and field of vision are deliberately limited, so that despite the clarity of the individual images, I felt almost claustrophobic, presented with disjoint perspectives that never were allowed to cohere into an entire world. That's not really a criticism of Dreyer, since that seems to be what he wanted to achieve, but it made me feel oddly uncomfortable watching the film.

The other thing is that his presentation of Joan is very unusual. Dreyer's Joan is unlike any that one might have encountered before. She is neither George Bernard Shaw's sharp-witted and -tongued conqueror, nor Shakespeare's ghastly slut from the Henry VI cycle, nor the angelic and apotheosized daughter of God from the Honneger oratorio, nor the Saint Ingrid Bergman persona given to us by later Hollywood. She seems weak, fearful, confused. How, one wonders, is this the woman who kicked the English crown into the Rhine? This again isn't really a criticism of Dreyer's film. I just found it strange that he chose to do that.

If you have seen or plan to see Dreyer's "Vampyr", I would be interested in your thoughts on it. It is very unlike "Passion". Visually, it is grainy and sleepily hypnotic, without a coherent plot (that I could tell), but with a handful of highly memorable images.

Posted by: Bryan at March 5, 2007 11:21 AM

Hey Bryan - how have you been? Always wonderful to hear from you. And I will put Vampyr on my Netflix queue - thank you!

I definitely felt uncomfortable watching the film as well, like you mentioned - it was a distinctly uneasy and kinda tense experience - the claustrophobia you mention is quite cloying. And the fact that the majority of the movie is just close-up to close-up to close-up with very few long shots adds to that. You are inside the brains of all of these people - as opposed to sitting back and watching the trial go down.

It's more psychological than anything ... plot-driven or realistic - if that makes ANY sense. I certainly need to think more about it.

Roger Ebert's review of this movie talks about some of Dreyer's methods - let me see if I can track it down, there's a lot of interesting things. Like - it's all one set. There's a model of it in a museum in Denmark, I think - Dreyer had movable walls, huge - so that you got a bit disoriented - like: where are they?? But it was constructed like a stage set, where you have a bunch of different scenes.

And if I recall correctly from stuff I have read - Dreyer had a vision of what he wanted with Falconetti - and he would pretty much do take after take after take with her until all of her reserves were stripped away, until she was doing the opposite of "acting". She was exhausted - with that kind of emotional fluidity that comes with exhaustion.

Also that he shot her without any makeup. You can see that her lips are chapped, for example. Dry and cracked.

I love that you were wondering whether or not I'd write about this film. Ha! You should have dropped me a line, asking me to. :)

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 11:28 AM

For anyone who is interested - here is Roger Ebert's review of this movie:

You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti. In a medium without words, where the filmmakers believed that the camera captured the essence of characters through their faces, to see Falconetti in Dreyer's ``The Passion of Joan of Arc'' (1928) is to look into eyes that will never leave you...

Dreyer had been given a large budget and a screenplay by his French producers, but he threw out the screenplay and turned instead to the transcripts of Joan's trial. They told the story that has become a legend: of how a simple country maid from Orleans, dressed as a boy, led the French troops in their defeat of the British occupation forces. How she was captured by French loyal to the British and brought before a church court, where her belief that she had been inspired by heavenly visions led to charges of heresy. There were 29 cross-examinations, combined with torture, before Joan was burned at the stake in 1431. Dreyer combined them into one inquisition, in which the judges, their faces twisted with their fear of her courage, loomed over her with shouts and accusations.

If you go to the Danish Film Museum in Copenhagen you can see Dreyer's model for the extraordinary set he built for the film. He wanted it all in one piece (with movable walls for the cameras), and he began with towers at four corners, linked with concrete walls so thick they could support the actors and equipment. Inside the enclosure were chapels, houses and the ecclesiastical court, built according to a weird geometry that put windows and doors out of plumb with one another and created discordant visual harmonies (the film was made at the height of German Expressionism and the French avant-garde movement in art).

It is helpful to see the model in Copenhagen, because you will never see the whole set in the movie. There is not one single establishing shot in all of ``The Passion of Joan of Arc,'' which is filmed entirely in closeups and medium shots, creating fearful intimacy between Joan and her tormentors. Nor are there easily read visual links between shots. In his brilliant shot-by-shot analysis of the film, David Bordwell of the University of Wisconsin concludes: ``Of the film's over 1,500 cuts, fewer than 30 carry a figure or object over from one shot to another; and fewer than 15 constitute genuine matches on action.''

What does this mean to the viewer? There is a language of shooting and editing that we subconsciously expect at the movies. We assume that if two people are talking, the cuts will make it seem that they are looking at one another. We assume that if a judge is questioning a defendant, the camera placement and editing will make it clear where they stand in relation to one another. If we see three people in a room, we expect to be able to say how they are arranged and which is closest to the camera. Almost all such visual cues are missing from ``The Passion of Joan of Arc.''

Instead Dreyer cuts the film into a series of startling images. The prison guards and the ecclesiastics on the court are seen in high contrast, often from a low angle, and although there are often sharp architectural angles behind them, we are not sure exactly what the scale is (are the windows and walls near or far?). Bordwell's book reproduces a shot of three priests, presumably lined up from front to back, but shot in such a way that their heads seem stacked on top of one another. All of the faces of the inquisitors are shot in bright light, without makeup, so that the crevices and flaws of the skin seem to reflect a diseased inner life.

Falconetti, by contrast, is shot in softer grays, rather than blacks and whites. Also without makeup, she seems solemn and consumed by inner conviction. Consider an exchange where a judge asks her whether St. Michael actually spoke to her. Her impassive face seems to suggest that whatever happened between Michael and herself was so far beyond the scope of the question that no answer is conceivable.

Why did Dreyer fragment his space, disorient the visual sense and shoot in closeup? I think he wanted to avoid the picturesque temptations of a historical drama. There is no scenery here, aside from walls and arches. Nothing was put in to look pretty. You do not leave discussing the costumes (although they are all authentic). The emphasis on the faces insists that these very people did what they did. Dreyer strips the church court of its ritual and righteousness and betrays its members as fleshy hypocrites in the pay of the British; their narrow eyes and mean mouths assault Joan's sanctity.

For Falconetti, the performance was an ordeal. Legends from the set tell of Dreyer forcing her to kneel painfully on stone and then wipe all expression from her face--so that the viewer would read suppressed or inner pain. He filmed the same shots again and again, hoping that in the editing room he could find exactly the right nuance in her facial expression. There is an echo in the famous methods of the French director Robert Bresson, who in his own 1962 ``The Trial of Joan of Arc'' put actors through the same shots again and again, until all apparent emotion was stripped from their performances. In his book on Dreyer, Tom Milne quotes the director: ``When a child suddenly sees an onrushing train in front of him, the expression on his face is spontaneous. By this I don't mean the feeling in it (which in this case is sudden fear), but the fact that the face is completely uninhibited.'' That is the impression he wanted from Falconetti.

That he got it is generally agreed. Perhaps it helps that Falconetti never made another movie (she died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1946). We do not have her face in other roles to compare with her face here, and the movie seems to exist outside time (the French director Jean Cocteau famously said it played like ``an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn't exist'').

To modern audiences, raised on films where emotion is conveyed by dialogue and action more than by faces, a film like ``The Passion of Joan of Arc'' is an unsettling experience--so intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire. Our sympathy is engaged so powerfully with Joan that Dreyer's visual methods--his angles, his cutting, his closeups--don't play like stylistic choices, but like the fragments of Joan's experience. Exhausted, starving, cold, in constant fear, only 19 when she died, she lives in a nightmare where the faces of her tormentors rise up like spectral demons.

Perhaps the secret of Dreyer's success is that he asked himself, ``What is this story really about?'' And after he answered that question he made a movie about absolutely nothing else.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 11:33 AM

Sheila,

Thanks for the warm welcome! I also, I am afraid to say, have acquired a Netflix subscription, so between that and work it's fairly dead to the blogosphere I've been. For my part, I love that you invite me to request topics for you to write on. Blogging at my request? I'll probably take you up on that. :)

Ebert's review actually helps me understand the film quite a bit better. "So intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire..." Yes. In a disjointed world of fragmented space, we find ourselves forced to see more than we might wish in the characters' faces.

For all of what I perceived as Joan's fragility in the film, I appreciate what Ebert says about her encounter with St. Michael, "Her impassive face seems to suggest that whatever happened between Michael and herself was so far beyond the scope of the question that no answer is conceivable." Perhaps Dreyer deprives us of continuities of space to mirror the inner lives of his characters, for whom spirit is primary and the physical world is unreal and broken, impinging on consciousness only as a source of pain.

Posted by: Bryan at March 5, 2007 1:27 PM

//impinging on consciousness only as a source of pain.//

The way you express that really resonates for me. It's like their literal questions to her: "Did Michael have wings? Did he have long hair?" - hurt her physically. Like - they so don't get it. They are so far away from that spirit world. And to her - it is a personal relationship.

What's the line from Shaw's play that she has - "I ask questions later"?? Let me look it up. Something like - she follows the voices and asks questions later. It is a completely trusting relationship.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 1:40 PM

Bryan - searching for that passage in Shaw's play right now. In the meantime:

ROBERT. What did you mean when you said that St Catherine and St Margaret talked to you every day?

JOAN. They do.

ROBERT. What are they like?

JOAN [suddenly obstinate] I will tell you nothing about that: they have not given me leave.

ROBERT. But you actually see them; and they talk to you just as I am talking to you?

JOAN. No: it is quite different. I cannot tell you: you must not talk to me about my voices.

ROBERT. How do you mean? voices?

JOAN. I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.

ROBERT. They come from your imagination.

JOAN. Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 1:57 PM

I know I'm insane - but I found the line I wanted:

Joan says: But the voices come first; and I find the reasons after.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 1:58 PM

Thanks for looking that up! That line, "That is how the messages of God come to us," for me is one of the two most memorable lines in the play, the other being, if I remember it correctly, "Must a Christ die in agony in every generation to save those who have no imagination?" That is Shaw the Shelleyan speaking. The imagination is the great instrument of moral good.

I think now that Dreyer's dissolution of the physical world in "Vampyr" must have been similarly motivated, but instead of God and the angels, what remains once the veil of the world has been taken away are ravenous spirits and the fundamental horror of naked consciousness.

By the way, when you see "Vampyr", be sure also to watch the short that comes on the same DVD, "The Mascot", an astonishing early claymation film about a girl's toy bunny who comes to life and goes in search of an orange to give to his beloved owner, going literally to hell and back (and encountering a very French-looking devil) to get one.

Posted by: Bryan at March 5, 2007 2:16 PM

My favorite moment (and I've never actually seen it performed as effectively as it exists in my mind) is when she says - after recanting she discovers that they are still going to imprison her for life - and the exchange goes:

JOAN: Perpetual imprisonment! Am I not then to be set free?

LADVENU Set free, child, after such wickedness as yours! What are you dreaming of?

JOAN. Give me that writing. [She rushes to the table; snatches up the paper; and tears it into fragments] Light your fire.

God, Bryan - the way I imagine her saying "Light your fire" ... I have shivers now just thinking of it.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 2:56 PM

That is a very powerful moment.

I have never seen "Saint Joan" performed either, or anything else of Shaw. Some of his works I can't even picture on stage. Imagine trying to watch a performance of "Back to Methuselah." Ugh. My buns wouldn't be able to take it.

"Saint Joan," though, has a direct emotional impact unusual in all the other Shaw I have read. One might have thought it would have become and remain one of his best-known plays, even though it doesn't seem to be.

Posted by: Bryan at March 5, 2007 4:08 PM

Yeah, it's a helluva play. The scenes just SPARK. They actually sound like real people talking - unlike a lot of Shaw. Like, some of it reads like conversation. I love the scene where she stalks up to the army dude and tells him to attack. He's like: Uhm ... who are you, young maid?? And then there's the other character - Charles - and she refers to him as "Charlie" - in this overly familiar way.

Lots of great stuff ...

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 4:10 PM

Like when Joan looks at some frowning serious duke and says, "Who's old Gruff-and-Grum?"

You really like her.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 4:12 PM

Okay - sorry Brian - just found the scene. I worked on this scene once in some class, and it was a blast. It ends with another goose-bumpy moment. Joan stalks up to the "bastard of Orleans" - who is basically standing by himself (his troops offstage, just hanging around) - checking the wind, ranting at the wind to change - he needs the wind to change for his boats to cross and attack the British - he knows that "the Maid" has been following him, trying to interject herself into battles and he keeps trying to fend her off. Joan stalks up to him and tells him what to do - great great scene.

JOAN [bluntly] Be you Bastard of Orleans?

DUNOIS [cool and stern, pointing to his shield] You see the bend sinister. Are you Joan the Maid?

JOAN. Sure.

DUNOIS. Where are your troops?

JOAN. Miles behind. They have cheated me. They have brought me to the wrong side of the river.

DUNOIS. I told them to.

JOAN. Why did you? The English are on the other side!

DUNOIS. The English are on both sides.

JOAN. But Orleans is on the other side. We must fight the English there. How can we cross the river?

DUNOIS [grimly] There is a bridge.

JOAN. In God's name, then, let us cross the bridge, and fall on them.

DUNOIS. It seems simple; but it cannot be done.

JOAN. Who says so?

DUNOIS. I say so; and older and wiser heads than mine are of the same opinion.

JOAN [roundly] Then your older and wiser heads are fatheads: they have made a fool of you; and now they want to make a fool of me too, bringing me to the wrong side of the river. Do you not know that I bring you better help than ever came to any general or any town?

DUNOIS [smiling patiently] Your own?

JOAN. No: the help and counsel of the King of Heaven. Which is the way to the bridge?

DUNOIS. You are impatient, Maid.

JOAN. Is this a time for patience? Our enemy is at our gates; and here we stand doing nothing. Oh, why are you not fighting? Listen to me: I will deliver you from fear. I--

DUNOIS [laughing heartily, and waving her off] No, no, my girl: if you delivered me from fear I should be a good knight for a story book, but a very bad commander of the army. Come! let me begin to make a soldier of you. [He takes her to the water's edge]. Do you see those two forts at this end of the bridge? the big ones?

JOAN. Yes. Are they ours or the goddams'?

DUNOIS. Be quiet, and listen to me. If I were in either of those forts with only ten men I could hold it against an army. The English have more than ten times ten goddams in those forts to hold them against us.

JOAN. They cannot hold them against God. God did not give them the land under those forts: they stole it from Him. He gave it to us. I will take those forts.

DUNOIS. Single-handed?

JOAN. Our men will take them. I will lead them.

DUNOIS. Not a man will follow you.

JOAN. I will not look back to see whether anyone is following me.

DUNOIS [recognizing her mettle, and clapping her heartily on the shoulder] Good. You have the makings of a soldier in you. You are in love with war.

JOAN [startled] Oh! And the Archbishop said I was in love with religion.

DUNOIS. I, God forgive me, am a little in love with war myself, the ugly devil! I am like a man with two wives. Do you want to be like a woman with two husbands?

JOAN [matter-of-fact] I will never take a husband. A man in Toul took an action against me for breach of promise; but I never promised him. I am a soldier: I do not want to be thought of as a woman. I will not dress as a woman. I do not care for the things women care for. They dream of lovers, and of money. I dream of leading a charge, and of placing the big guns. You soldiers do not know how to use the big guns: you think you can win battles with a great noise and smoke.

DUNOIS [with a shrug] True. Half the time the artillery is more trouble than it is worth.

JOAN. Aye, lad; but you cannot fight stone walls with horses: you must have guns, and much bigger guns too.

DUNOIS [grinning at her familiarity, and echoing it] Aye, lass; but a good heart and a stout ladder will get over the stoniest wall.

JOAN. I will be first up the ladder when we reach the fort, Bastard. I dare you to follow me.

DUNOIS. You must not dare a staff officer, Joan: only company officers are allowed to indulge in displays of personal courage. Besides, you must know that I welcome you as a saint, not as a soldier. I have daredevils enough at my call, if they could help me.

JOAN. I am not a daredevil: I am a servant of God. My sword is sacred: I found it behind the altar in the church of St Catherine, where God hid it for me; and I may not strike a blow with it. My heart is full of courage, not of anger. I will lead; and your men will follow: that is all I can do. But I must do it: you shall not stop me.

DUNOIS. All in good time. Our men cannot take those forts by a sally across the bridge. They must come by water, and take the English in the rear on this side.

JOAN [her military sense asserting itself] Then make rafts and put big guns on them; and let your men cross to us.

DUNOIS. The rafts are ready; and the men are embarked. But they must wait for God.

JOAN. What do you mean? God is waiting for them.

DUNOIS. Let Him send us a wind then. My boats are downstream: they cannot come up against both wind and current. We must wait until God changes the wind. Come: let me take you to the church.

JOAN. No. I love church; but the English will not yield to prayers: they understand nothing but hard knocks and slashes. I will not go to church until we have beaten them.

DUNOIS. You must: I have business for you there.

JOAN. What business?

DUNOIS. To pray for a west wind. I have prayed; and I have given two silver candlesticks; but my prayers are not answered. Yours may be: you are young and innocent.

JOAN. Oh yes: you are right. I will pray: I will tell St Catherine: she will make God give me a west wind. Quick: shew me the way to the church.

THE PAGE [sneezes violently] At-cha!!!

JOAN. God bless you, child! Coom, Bastard.

They go out. The page rises to follow. He picks up the shield, and is taking the spear as well when he notices the pennon, which is now streaming eastward.

THE PAGE [dropping the shield and calling excitedly after them] Seigneur! Seigneur! Mademoiselle!

DUNOIS [running back] What is it? The kingfisher? [He looks eagerly for it up the river].

JOAN [joining them] Oh, a kingfisher! Where?

THE PAGE. No: the wind, the wind, the wind [pointing to the pennon]: that is what made me sneeze.

DUNOIS [looking at the pennon] The wind has changed. [He crosses himself] God has spoken. [Kneeling and handing his baton to Joan] You command the king's army. I am your soldier.

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 4:23 PM

Sheila, you are a fanatic! I love that you took the trouble to look up and post this!

Shaw really does seem to have liked Joan much more than his other characters. I had forgotten about that "Charlie" moment.

Posted by: Bryan at March 5, 2007 6:06 PM

Bryan - ha, I am a maniac! But that was just cutting and pasting - the play is online, so i'm not TOO crazy.

Also it's such a joy to talk to you - not only have you seen the movie, but you have a frame of reference that I share. It's very cool!

Because my Netflix queue is now 3 years long probably, I won't get to Vampyr for a while - hahaha - but I look forward to it!

Posted by: red at March 5, 2007 6:41 PM

"It's such a joy to talk to you." The feeling's mutual, my friend. I've been smiling ear to ear reading your comments today.

And, yeah, Netflix is worse than crack. To think that I used to be something of an intellectual who read books. Not anymore; gotta watch Spencer Tracy tonight instead.

Posted by: Bryan at March 5, 2007 8:18 PM