close up - Monoskop

130 CLOSE UP
scrapes up a handful of gold nuggets from the table. Then he disappears into the muddy
blackness.
But before going, he flings his hangman's rope upon the table. Take it' he says 'they
say a hangman's noose brings good luck.'
Vol. Ill, no. 1 July 1928
JOAN OF ARC
'The Passion and Death of a Saint' is a film that has caused me more unrest, more
spiritual forebodings, more intellectual racking, more emotional torment than any I
have yet seen. We are presented with Jeanne d'Arc in a series of pictures, portraits
burnt on copper, bronze if you will, anyhow obviously no aura of quattrocento gold
and gold dust and fleurs-de-lys in straight hieratic pattern, none of your fresco that
makes the cell of Savonarola make the legend of Savonarola bearable even to this day.
Jeanne d'Arc is done in hard clear line, remorseless, poignant, bronze stations of the
cross, carved upon mediaeval cathedral doors, bronze of that particular sort of mediaeval
fanaticism that says no and again no to any such weakening incense as Fra Angelico
gold and lilies of heavenly comfort. Why did and why didn't this particular Jeanne
d'Arc so touch us? Jeanne d'Arc takes us so incredibly far that having taken us so far,
we are left wondering why didn't this exquisite and superb piece of screen dramatisation
take us further? Carl Dreyer, a Dane, one of the most superb of the magnificently
growing list of directors, is responsible for this odd two-edged sort of feeling. His film,
for that, is unique in the annals of film art. The passion of the Jeanne is superbly, almost
mediumistically portrayed by Mile Falconetti. Heart and head are given over to
inevitable surrender. Heart broke, head bowed. But another set of curious nervereactions
were brought into play here. Why is it that my hands inevitably clench at the
memory of those pictures, at the casual poster that I pass daily in this lake-side small
town? Is it necessary to be put on guard? Must I be made to feel on the defence this way
and why? Also why must my very hands feel that they are numb and raw and bleeding,
clenched fists tightened, bleeding as if beating at those very impregnable mediaeval
church doors?
For being let into the very heart, the very secret of the matter, we are let out of ...
something. I am shown Jeanne, she is indeed before me, the country child, the great lout
of a hulking boy or girl, blubbering actually, great tears coursing down round
sun-hardened, wind-hardened, oak-tree hardened face outline and outline of cheek
hollow and the indomitable small chin. Jeanne is first represented to us, small as seen
from above, the merest flash of sturdy boy figure, walking with chained ankles toward
judges (too many) seated in slices above on ecclesiastical benches. Jeanne is seen as
small, as intolerably sturdy and intolerably broken, the sort of inhuman showing up
of Jeanne that from the first strikes some note of defiance in us. Now why should we