Synopsis
Cecil B. DeMille's Cinema Masterpiece
A WWI English officer is inspired the night before a dangerous mission by a vision of Joan of Arc, whose story he relives.
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Joan the Woman
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Director
Producer
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Cinematography
Art Direction
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Country
Language
Alternative Titles
Jeanne d'Arc, Jeanne d'arc, Giovanna d'Arco, Jana z Arku, Joana la dona
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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USANR
30 May 2023
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CzechiaU
Releases by Country
Czechia
30 May 2023
- TheatricalU
USA
25 Dec 1916
- TheatricalNR
Popular reviews
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Bloated, but not without some great moments. It evokes a sense of cultural pride for the French which I imagine would have been a spiritual balm for French audiences back in 1916.
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1916
DeMille's first epic is an absolute banger, bolstered by a novel and strikingly current (although also distractingly propagandistic) framing device in which a soldier in the trenches finds Joan of Arc's sword buried in the wall beside his bunk. This leads to a lengthy flashback that manages to spur him to undertake a suicide mission at the film's conclusion.
The heart of the film, though, is obviously all of the stuff involving Joan of Arc. The battle sequences are stunning and mud-soaked nightmare fuel, in which I have no doubt people were injured. These things look dangerous, which - as is the case with most silent films - probably means they were.
And the film's conclusion, in which Joan…
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D.W. Griffith receives all sorts of praise for the epic scale of 1916's INTOLERANCE. DeMille's JOAN THE WOMAN, released the same year, certainly gives INTOLERANCE a run for its money. The centerpiece Battle of Orleans is on the same scale as Griffith's fall of Babylon - hundred of extras wildly flailing swords and spears, lots of men in armour falling off towers to...hopefully something safe? (it was 1916, for all I know they were falling into gator pits). It's quite exhilarating and frankly more visually coherent than INTOLERANCE.
JOAN THE WOMAN features an outstanding lead performance from Geraldine Farrar who is equal parts saintly and casual. She's saintly when receiving a vision from God, casual when distributing loot to her…
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Aside from a spectacular proto-Helm's Deep battle sequence, a Méliès-esque burning at the stake and the audacity to have a WWI framing device, a little restrained for DeMille. Actually come to think of it, having three memorable things sets it apart from most movies. Anyway, they don't shave her head in this one.
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This silent film contains one of the first COLORED scenes in a movie ever, and we are talking about 1916! It's in a scene with a big fire where everything is in B&W but the flames are all ORANGE, and my God that scene felt like a cinematic masterpiece. This is the first Joan of Arc film I have watched so far, and one of my first tries of silent cinema, and OHHH BOY IT PAYED OFF. The action battles in this movie are EPIC. They are grand, majestic, with possibly a lot of people dying while it was filmed and with awe inspiring set pieces that apparently were also massive influence on Lord of the Rings films later on.…
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Out of any Joan of Arc movie I’ve seen, this exudes the fullest sense of why she became such a sanctified historical figure. In this picture’s second shot, DeMille directly compares Joan to Jesus Christ, and then goes on to frame the story of her leading the French to victory and subsequent censure and condemnation with a brief narrative of an English WWI soldier being asked to take on a suicide mission and having a vision of Joan as he ponders his own fate. Such direct comparisons across history don’t flatten the presented figures into stable symbols, their multiplicity throughout rather traces them as expressions of opposing abstract, even divine, forces through time. From the first title which says Joan…
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I did watch the very long Ten Commandments quite awhile back, but haven’t seen any other DeMille films.
Joan the Woman is Demille’s first try at an epic film, and it was certainly more epic than I expected any 1916 film to be.
I didn’t know anything about this movie beforehand, so I was surprised after the opening text to hear the organ play “Rule Britannia” and to see a card reading “English Trench 1916.” In 1916 of course the Great War was a very important event that did not involve Americans, it certainly would give the film a particular kick for its intended audience to connect these faraway historical events with contemporary ones. The WW1 scenes are less than…
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Finally getting to some interesting oddities in journey through the representation of witchcraft in American film. Structurally takes an unconventional angle in exploring the legacy of Joan of Arc and her eventual burning at the stake, presented in the form of a dream envisioned by a soldier shortly before setting off on a suicide mission. In other words her story is reframed in the form of WW1 propaganda.
By exploring this story Joan of Arc in an inspirational and heroic light, its a fascinating example of what a feminist story from the silent era looked like, even if from a regressive lens that somehow still manages to make men the hero's of the story.
With Cecil B. DeMille as the…
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Geraldine Farrar is The World’s Oldest Teenager as Joan of Arc in Cecil B. DeMille’s retelling of the famous story, meant as inspiration to France in WWI it seems. Farrar may have been too old for Joan but she was still a great screen presence. The storming of the castle at Orleans is an impressive spectacle, as was the finale (which included some bits of what I assume were hand colored flames.) This boasts some terrifically DeMille-esque melodrama in the second half.
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Joan of Arc watchthrough (2/14)
DeMille doing his best Griffith impression, and the stirring melodrama and epic scale certainly stand up to Griffith's work, with impressive battle scenes starring large casts of extras who are noticeably choreographed for a medium that, by now, people finally understand is a very distinct one from the stage. There are also some great visuals such as the saints appearing to Joan.
Unfortunately, this also is similarly politically thorny to Griffith's work, in that it is propaganda for one of the most hideous wars in human history, with a WWI trench soldier going "over the top" to a suicide mission being presented as a "happy" ending. Easier to ignore here as it's just a frame…