SIFF 2013 is over — well, sort of: the Best of SIFF runs June 12 through the 20th — but if you need a film to see tonight, then make tracks to the Paramount for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc, 7 p.m. It’s the first of a series of international silent films. After a stop in France, the series moves on to Ireland on June 17 (The Colleen Bawn, directed by Sidney Olcott), and to India on June 24 (A Throw of Dice, directed by Germany’s Franz Osten, with Indian actor and producer Himansu Rai). All are accompanied by Jim Riggs on the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ.
Roger Ebert’s 1997 review of the 1928 Passion of Joan Arc film begins: “You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti,” and then he himself goes on to quote Pauline Kael saying: “It may be the finest performance ever recorded on film.” Amazing! you think. I must see all of this prodigy’s work! Then go see the movie tonight — and relax, because that’s all we seem to have from Falconetti.
For Danish director Dreyer, the emphasis is on the “passion,” which I think radically for 1928, contrasts 19-year-old Joan’s experience with that of an itinerant Jewish preacher run afoul of the Roman judicial system. (For plenty of people, there would have been no comparison at all — blasphemous to use a similar construction for Joan and Jesus.) It’s an early fictional-documentary, based on the trial of Joan of Arc from contemporary accounts of the proceedings. The Church doesn’t come off well.
“There were 29 cross-examinations, combined with torture,” explains Ebert, “before Joan was burned at the stake in 1431.”