JOAN OF ARC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 556, 17 February 1950, Page 15

JOAN OF ARC

(Sierra Pictures) HEN his daughter Jeanne first spoke of travelling from Domrémy to join the armies attempting to raise the siege of Orleans, Jacques d’Arc swore he would drown her with his own hands sooner than permit it. It was no doubt a momentary outburst — the protest of a harassed father who could no longer understand his daughter’s thoughts or divine what dangers they might lead her into-but, as harsh words often are, these were remembered. Perhaps the gossips of Domrémy or Vaucouleurs kept them in mind; they probably reached print or parchment during the papal inquiry which vindicated Jeanne 25 years after her martyrdom. At all events, over five hundred years after they were uttered they were carefully copied into the script of Joan of Arc. It might be interesting, though it would hardly be profitable, to speculate on how such coloured threads come to find their way into the ragbag of history, but at the moment all that I am concerned with is the way that particular thread indicates the general texture and pattern of the film-story. As one has had cause to notice on this page before, when Hollywood’s historical plays are under discussion, those of the better sort are often painstakingly documented. Joan of Arc comes into that category. In small things it is remarkably faithful-the . circumstances of Joan’s departure from Vaucouleurs and Baudricourt’s words of farewell, the design of banners and devices, the styles of armour (with the possible exception of Joan’s "white armour," which looks more like the work of a modern panelbeater), even the crosses etched upon her sword. Accuracy of minor detail, however, is not enough. Joan of Arc is no miniature -it lasts two and a-half hours-and the broader perspectives are by ho means so satisfying. If, for example, there are insuperable difficulties in the way of making a film where the events it depicts actually took place, then the business of filling in the background demands art and imagination. Yet far too often in Walter Wanger’s over-populated set-pieces one is conscious mainly of the Hollywood sound-stage, of old familiar, battlements freshly sanded over, and the hordes of earnest extras laying manfully into one another with property swords ,and daggers. The big crowd scenes-the assault on the bastion outside Orleans, the abjuration in the cemetery at Saint-Ouen, the marketplace at Rouen-are on the whole untidily managed. I felt at such times that the director (Victor Fleming) might well have remembered Henry V., and remembered it with advantages. However, it is in its attempts to catch the spirit and atmosphere of the times that the film fails most signally. The hands may be the hands of Esau, but (if one may be forgiven for exnet the metaphor somewhat) the voice is the Voice of America. Contemporary colloquialism occasionally makes one flinch, but the film’s weak-

7 nesses go deeper than the text. Hollywood, it would seem again, still lacks the intellectual maturity to handle deeply religious themes, or interpret with any sureness or sensitivity the major crises of the human ‘spirit. Once or twice Ingrid Bergman as the Maid did give a hint of what might have been Accomplished. In the square at Rouen, for example, when she first saw the stake and the faggots the horror in her eyes was more moving than her army with all its banners. Beside her the anly other person in the cast worthy of notice was aoe Ferrer, whos played the Dauphin. ough he got little help from his .lines, he did look’ as if he might have belonged to the 15th Century, his voice was pitched to fit the part, and he moved as if he had given thought to his movements. The resteven Francis L. Sulliyan-impressed me little or not at all. It was, in fact, difficult to avoid the conclusion that the a might have made a better job of it,