Procès de Jeanne d’Arc [The Trial of Joan of Arc] (1962)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) Some viewers will be able to approach writer-director Robert Bresson’s docufictive Procès de Jeanne d’Arc as its own thing, but I can’t help but see it largely in comparison to other Jeanne d’Arc movies. There’s obviously a kinship between it and the earlier 1928 classic film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc written-directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer – like the earlier film, Bresson seems to be building a script as directly as possible from historical documentation, and his sparse style feels like a close match to Dreyer’s stripped-down aesthetics. Given the near-legendary stature of the silent film and its portrayal of Jeanne d’Arc, it would have been impossible for Bresson not to tailor his film in opposition or reinforcement to the original. But I can’t help but measure Procès de Jeanne d’Arc against other, newer depictions of the historical character – and specifically Luc Besson’s (not Bresson!) 1999 maximalist approach to The Messenger: The Story of Jeanne d’Arc, which showed an exemplary demonstration of how far the state of the art in cinema had evolved in the decades between silent cinema and the turn of the millennium. In this three-way comparison, Bresson ends up feeling like a barely updated version of the silent film – with sound, sure, but not much else – and a lead performance that can’t possibly measure up to the still incredible performance by Renée Jeanne Falconetti. Oh, on a basic level, it fulfills its basic task: Jean d’Arc’s trial is presented properly, and you can even argue that the film doesn’t go quite as hard on its religious themes as its predecessor. But it’s still a sparse, austere piece of cinema that barely reflects what else the medium was able to do after thirty-five years of progress. I’m not much of a Bresson fan either, so saying that the film is “fine” is already a step up from some of his more irritating works. No wonder I’m having more fun comparing it to other similar films than taking it on its own.