Mansplaining To Joan Of Arc

Title: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Rating: 4 Stars

The story of Joan of Arc is one of those historical events that doesn’t seem to be possible. Starting in the 14th century, France and England fought the Hundred Years’ War. The Hundred Years’ War is not only not an exaggeration, but actually undersells it a bit. The war went on for 116 years.

At the point of this story, the war had been going on for about a hundred years. France was in trouble. Various English King Henrys had proclaimed themselves king of both England and France. The various French Charles were either insane or ineffectual.

Onto the scene comes Joan. Having first started receiving visions of angels when she was about thirteen, when she was sixteen, she was inspired to go to the French crown prince (known as the Dauphin) to send her to the siege at Orleans. It really says something about the desperate straits that France found herself in that the Dauphin to agree to send the illiterate sixteen year old young woman.

Even more amazingly, it worked. She inspired the French soldiers and they broke the siege of Orleans. Without question she went into battle wearing armor. There’s some question regarding how much military leadership she provided, but it does appear that at Orleans and later battles, she provided military strategy to the French army. This led to a change in fortune of the Hundred Years’ as the French began to gain the advantage.

Understandably, the English were pretty much convinced that she was a witch. Eventually captured, she was put on trial, convicted, and burned at the stake in the French town of Rouen when she was about nineteen. On a personal note, many years ago, I was in France and visited Rouen. The site where she was apparently burned is now a tourist destination.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film made in 1928. At one time, it was only available in corrupt versions after government and church censorship. It was considered to be one of the great lost classics. Bizarrely enough, a full version was discovered in a Norwegian mental hospital in 1981.

In the film, Joan has been captured. She is put on trial by religious authorities. They try to get her to confess. She refuses and is threatened with torture. Faced with death, she signs a false confession. Realizing that doing so is a betrayal of God, she recants. She is then burned at the stake. The soldiers beat the people that have been converted by Joan’s martyrdom. A closing caption says that the smoke is guiding her soul into heaven.

Looking at it from the lens of 2021, this film is all about the tyranny of the patriarchy. It is Joan, a very young woman, against a horde of much older men. Intentionally filmed with out makeup or flattering lighting, the men (and there are dozens of them) look like gargoyles. Their faces, full of warts and wrinkles, have expressions that vary from grim judgmentalism to outraged fury at the audacity of this woman to withstand their withering questioning.

The men do not fight fairly. They hurl questions at her from all different directions. They ask loaded questions so that they can pounce on her if she makes a religiously unorthodox answer. They shout her down when she tries to answer. They fake a letter from the French king to encourage her to renounce. A priest pretends to be her honest confidant but is actually working for the authorities. They demonstrate their torture devices to terrify her into submission.

I imagine that there are women today that can empathize with Joan’s plight. Especially in the software or engineering world, it’s not unusual for there to be only one woman in a meeting. In such a world composed of alpha geek engineers, it’s often difficult for the woman’s voice to be heard. In fact, I knew of a female software engineer in an organization comprised of over one hundred engineers. In that organization, there were more engineers named Dan or Dave than there were women. Women in this organization were routinely assigned insignificant roles and were denied opportunities for advancement.

Watching these elderly, grotesque men angrily berate this earnest young woman on whether or not she had a personal relationship with God seemed to be the epitome of mansplaining.

Similar in nature to the patriarchy, this was also about the immense might of the state against an individual. Always outnumbered, usually by dozens of authority figures, Joan does not have a chance against the state apparatus. The state will take whatever means necessary to get the results that it wants. Intimidating, lying, and fraud are all options on the table. Capital punishment, then as now, is the ultimate statement of state authority over an individual’s rights.

Maria Falconetti’s performance is considered one of the great of the silent film era. It must have been grueling. She is crying in nearly scene. In most of the film, her expressive face is in tight closeup.

The use of closeups is one of the visual highlights of this film. Not just Joan but all of the characters are shown in very tight closeups. You can see the spittle fly as they yell their abuse at Joan. To recreate 15th century France, an extensive setting was built. Since the director insisted on using such tight closeups, much to the producers’ displeasure, most of the set never appeared in the final print.

One final note concerns the fact that I think that I’ve established that Robert Duvall is a vampire. One of the priests in the film (again, to remind you, made in 1928) bares an astonishing resemblance to Duvall. Just so you know.

The film itself suffers from the fate of many silent films in that, even at a relatively speedy 80 minutes, it drags a bit. Especially with so many scenes in tight closeup, how many minutes do you really want to spend watching Joan cry? Except for the final burning at the stake, there’s really not a lot of activity taking place.