Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc

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Audience Member Profound, disturbing, and beautiful. Dreyer's version is also worth watching, although only the last 30% is great. This entire film is great. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/15/23 Full Review Audience Member I take it that this is no one's favourite Bresson film. However, I found this return to his stylized world refreshing - there is no one quite like Bresson. Perhaps the choice of film content was so obvious that some reviewers felt he was going through the motions? Bresson has always focused on issues of faith and how challenges that a person faces might lead them to question their faith. So, Joan of Arc represents a person in such a challenging position - although perchance it is we the audience or Joan's interrogators from the Church who are really being challenged, given that Joan's faith nary wavers a bit. Bresson is also acknowledging Dreyer as one of his forebears, given the earlier director's transcendent version of this story, also based on the available transcripts from the trial. However, Bresson's version is far different from Dreyer's ecstatic take and instead almost mechanical in its stoic and restrained approach. But the inhibited nature of the film (and those typical shots of Joan's hands and feet, often in shackles) somehow elicits a heightened reaction from the viewer, as if the viewer must contribute him or herself the emotion and spiritual force that have been omitted on screen. Of course, modern viewers might be led to wonder whether Joan of Arc might have been experiencing schizophrenia, but the final shot of the stake after Joan has been burned suggests that Bresson did not share similar doubts. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member It's no surprise that Bresson found Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 classic on Joan of Arc to be full of "grotesque buffooneries" considering the fact that the latter's film was full of emphatic physical expression, something Bresson nearly always shunned, one exception being in this very film where Joan of Arc is briefly seen weeping after her first interrogation. I did not find Bresson's film to be any more profound than Dreyer's, but I did admire the craft and Bresson's individuality that went into it. I also highly admired the performance given by Florence Delay as Joan of Arc. She was nowhere near as expressive as Maria Falconetti, but there was a certain angelic resoluteness about her which she portrayed as being tainted only by youthful trepidation. It was an incredibly honest performance. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/25/23 Full Review Audience Member In my opinion it is one of Bresson's weakest works. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review Audience Member Outro de Bresson, sobre Joana D'Arc, baseado em documentos do julgamento. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/31/23 Full Review Audience Member A very different film from Dreyer's Joan tale, particularly relative to faith. While Dreyer's film seems to be asking "Will you believe?" Bresson's film instead seems to suggest, "How can you not?" The final ten minutes are exquisite, with rhythmic editing, that wonderfully mysterious dog, and the beautiful feet taking the cross to the flames. The film is certainly austere, but Bresson builds to a formal crescendo unsurpassed in his filmography. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc

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