LECTURE THREE

PROCÈS DE JEANNE D’ARC (THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC)

1962

Director:Robert Bresson

TERMS

Symbol: Something which stands for something in an arbitrary way.

Cultural presupposition: Knowledge the film or any other maker presupposes the audience has

Joan of Arc has been used as a symbol for many different things by different authors and film makers.

Bresson’s interest is in Joan as something real, not image or symbol, and hence the question of “truth” and accuracy come into play once again.

Ethnocentrism problem can occur not just with another place but also time. What do you know about people from Joan of Arc’s time?

There is a serious question about whether films are “just films” or whether they have a serious impact on the public and if so what the nature of the impact is.

One camp tends to want to censor films because people believe what they see, while the other camp reduces the question to “It’s just a film”. But are films just films? Why do people make documentaries etc. if they are “just films”. If they don’t worry about accuracy are they making films to “delude the public” as has certainly been the case with many so called “documentaries”

There are various kinds of non-fiction film which include documentaries, docudramas, mockumentaries, “essays”, “art films” and instructional films, and so on. Some of these like docudramas

All of these may be biased in specific directions. Rick Burns Coney Island talks about Freud visiting Coney Island while showing a man with a beard and hat whom we are “lead to believe” is Freud, but isn’t. Also by juxtaposing the killing of the elephant and the burning of Luna Park he attempts to indicate a link between the two events although they happened nearly a decade apart.

Nanook of the north, a famous documentary has many staged scenes, but the scenes are accurate “reproductions” of what happened. (T.V. ads are now required to talk about “dramatization” and so on. Most people don’t argue that commercials should not be accurate while at the same time arguing that all art (and possible science and everything else) is inaccurate.

The classic “docu-drama” roots invents all manner of material for which there is no historic evidence. Clever editing is also used in many of the Roger Moore films to make you believe something (of the opposite) of what is actually happening. An Inconvenient Truth is apparently so flawed that it can not be shown in the school system in Britain and scientists have written letters protesting its inaccuracy with sufficient enthusiasm that the Nobel Prize has been damaged as a result of giving him the Peace Prize.

Truth/Accuracy - Interpretation vs. Fact

Many bio/pics have some statement about the researchers for the film indicating that the film is accurate. This is also true for historical dramas and even films not thought of as being based on reality. Many films indicate “experts” who serve as technical advisors on the film (viz. The Mummy and many police and military films) who are traditionally ignored in favor of dramatic impact.

All films have a bias which is the result of selection of what one choose to show. The question is – do they show things accurately. Implications may be a problem. Consider the problems of homosexuality in Night and Day and Delovely.

It would be difficult to argue though that a film about Christopher Columbus in which he is born in 1700 and discovers China would actually constitute a biography. In fact in many cases (as we will discuss later) criticism of historical films often rests on accuracy vs. non accuracy. In fact, even books which have been written saying that this is in fact not an important distinction often then proceed to talk about how the changes from real life into reel life reflect some wondrous underlying cultural pattern, and in effect acknowledge the idea that accuracy in important in these films. Custen, for example, talks about the way in which biographies are altered to conform to some cultural pattern, indicating that indeed there is a distortion of reality. This is true in many films, even narrative ones and interesting questions can be raised about the things in films which are accepted by audiences while others are rejected. Most people accepted quite easily the idea that a major city would construct a large bird cage in the top of a municipal building to house a homicidal maniac as happens in Silence of the Lambs.

Some errors in film are simply odd enough that they may go unnoticed by the general public because they don’t know any better. Hieroglyphs are read in the wrong direction and the number of canopic jars is incorrect in The Mummy (1999)

The question of historical drama, docudrama and biography.

All three are generally typified by the fact that actual people’s names are used as opposed to narrative films where this does not happen. Not all characters however, need be real, and in some instances several people may be merged into one character.

Some film analysts have become more interested in the cultural information contain in a film or a body of films. That is to say they are more interested in how the film deviates from reality while in some senses claiming that such deviations are irrelevant.

In this course we will be looking at several of these points.

Biographies may be considered a subdivision of historical drama in that they are generally taken to be factual and to some degree use the names of real people in the situations in which they were involved.

In some senses, the relationship between biographical film and non biographical film is like that of the relationship between theater and circus. In theater, the performers assume roles which are created by the writer, while in the circus the performers basically play themselves. In theater it is the performs talent to interpret a role that is significant so both the role and the ability to interpret it become crucial, while in circus the performers talent lies in what they do as “themselves” albeit it in a stage personality (in some senses clowns lie in a peculiar place in that they are rarely themselves but much more theatrical performers, taking on a role which often they themselves create.

In addition to actual biographies there are roman à clef (novel with a key) in which real characters are depicted in disguised form. Films like The Mirror Crack’d (from Side to Side), are not really roman à clef, but stories “inspired” by some event – in this case Gene Tierney who had a mentally retarded daughter as the result of having contracted measles.

In these two films we approach two problems: one the casting of the film and its effect on the film (and audience) and secondly its effect on the actor.

In terms of Joanne of Arc, the most famous problem revolved around Ingrid Bergman playing the role in 1948. Shortly thereafter she began an affair with director Roberto Rossellini by whom she became pregnant and had a son. The fact that they were not married and she had played Joanne of Arc (not just in the film, but in the stage play by Maxwell Anderson).produced a storm of criticism. Sen. Edwin Johnson, a Democrat from Colorado, denounced her on the floor of the US Senate.claiming she was "a horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence for evil." And even got her declared “persona non grata” She was forced to go to Italy while her husband a daughter stayed in the US until he divorced her and battled her for custody of the child.

Eventually, Ed Sullivan polled his audience to she if he should invite her on his show (they said no, he didn’t invite her) but rival Steve Allen did and replied to criticism of this by saying “If it became a principle to keep off TV those performers who have been guilty of adultery, then I am very much afraid that a great many of your favorite programs would disappear."

Playing religious figures can get you into trouble. Audience confuse the performer with the character.

Other performers who have managed Joanne without scandal have been Geraldine Ferrar in Joan the Woman (1917); Sybil Thorndike in St. Joan (1927); Jean Seberg in St. Joan in (1957); Hedy Lamarr in The Story of Mankind (1957)

Most recently there has been a scandal about the actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes when it was discovered that the teen aged actress playing the virgin Mary was indeed herself pregnant.

In the first film, we have a bio about a person some people feel may never had existed, but even more importantly everything written about him is written after he had died. This leads to a problem of those biographies in which the subject (and people who knew the subject) can be interviewed and those where they can.

These two films differ dramatically in this. THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD is restricted to the books of the Bible, written many years after the death of Christ while the text of THE TRIAL OF JOANNE OF ARC is taken exclusively from the transcript of the trial.

In Biblical films, there are problems about contradictions (in both Old and New Testament, but the New Testament is complicated by the fact the story of Jesus’ life is told four times by four people (almost like Citizen Kane or Rashomon. Screen writers and directors have to find ways to “synchronize” the gospels or else rely on only one (see Il VAngelo Secondo Matteo, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (English title in USA. Note the addition of the word “St.” in the American version which Passolini deliberate avoided in Italian and objected to in the English translation).

JOAN OF ARC

Not much information about culture or history given by film.

Cast members are not professional actors.

FILM IS BLACK AND WHITE

Final Moments:

Feet – running to God? Parlllel to opening shot

Body vanishes. What does this say?