close up - Monoskop

THE CONTRIBUTION OF H.D. 131
be defiant? I think it is that we all have our Jeanne, each one of us in the secret great
cavernous interior of the cathedral (if I may be fantastic) of the subconscious. Now
another Jeanne strides in, an incomparable Jeanne, indubitably a more Jeanne-ish
Jeanne than our Jeanne but it just isn't our Jeanne. Worse than that it is a better Jeanne,
a much, much better, more authentic Jeanne than our Jeanne; scathing realism has
gone one better than mere imaginative idealism. We know we are out-witted. This is a
real, real, Jeanne (poor Jeanne) little mountain Newfoundland puppy, some staunch
and true and incomparably loyal creature, something so much more wonderful than any
greyhound outline or sleek wolf-hound is presented us, the very incarnation of loyalty
and integrity ... dwarfed, below us, as if about to be tramped or kicked into a corner
by giant soldier iron-heeled great boots. Marching boots, marching boots, the heavy hulk
of leather and thong-like fastenings and cruel nails ... no hint of the wings on the heels
of the legions that followed the lily-banner; the cry that sang toward Orleans is in no
way ever so remotely indicated. We are allowed no comfort of mere beatific lilies, no hint
of the memory of lover-comrade men's voices, the comrades that Jeanne must have
loved loyally, the perfect staunch child friend, the hero, the small Spartan, the very
Telisila upon the walls of that Argos, that is just it. This is no Telisila upon the walls of
Argos, no Athene who for the moment has laid aside her helmet for other lesser matters
than that of mere courage and fidelity. This is an Athene stripped of intellect, a Telisila
robbed of poetry, it is a Jeanne d'Arc that not only pretends to be real, but that is real,
a Jeanne that is going to rob us of our own Jeanne.
Is that the secret of this clenching of fists, this sort of spiritual antagonism I have to
the shaved head, the stares, defiant bronze-statue, from the poster that I pass on my way
to market? Is it another Jeanne in me (in each of us) that starts warily at the picture, the
actual portrait of the mediaeval girl warrior? The Jeanne d'Arc of Carl Dreyer is so
perfect that we feel somehow cheated. This must be right. This must be right ...
therefore by some odd equivocal twist of subconscious logic, /must be wrong. I am put
in the wrong, therefore I clench my fists. Heaven is within you ... therefore I stand
staring guiltily at bronze figures cut upon a church door, at friezes upon the under-gables
of a cathedral that I must stare up at, see in slices as that incomparable Danish artist
made me see Jeanne in her perhaps over-done series of odd sliced portraits (making
particularly striking his studies of the judges and the accusers of Jeanne, as if seen by
Jeanne her self from below) overwhelming bulk of ecclesiastical political accusation. I
know in my mind that this is a great tour de force, perhaps one of the greatest. But I
am left wary, a little defiant. Again why and why and why and just, just why? Why am
I defiant before one of the most exquisite and consistent works of screen art and
perfected craft that it has been our immeasurable privilege to witness?
One, I am defiant for this reason (and I have worked it out carefully and with agony:
I and you and the baker's boy beside me and Mrs Captain Jones-Smith's second maid
and our own old Nanna and somebody else's gardener and the honeymoon boy and
girl and the old sporting colonel and the tennis teacher and the crocodile of young
ladies from the second pension to the left as you turn to the right by the market road
that branches off before the stall where the old lady sells gentians and single pinks and
Alpenrosen each in their season (just now it is somewhat greenish valley-lilies) are in
no need of such brutality. Not one of us, not one of us is in need of this stressing and