1900: JOAN OF ARC

Director:  Georges Méliès
Starring:  Jeanne d'Alcy
Length:  10:19 minutes

   It’s the first movie of my project—and it’s in color!  Yeah, people were making color movies back then.  At least, partially color movies... they weren’t shot that way, some guy had to manually dye the film afterwards.  It sounds incredibly tedious, which is probably why the whole thing isn’t color-tinted this way.  The color is added here and there, mostly in the main foreground characters, which honestly makes it a little easier to follow since the frame is a bit busy at times

   This is "Joan of Arc" by Georges Méliès, one of the early period pieces.  I honestly can’t say anything qualitative about it—if I say I like it, I sound condescending, but if I say I don’t then I’m presentist.  It’s fun, though... one good thing about Méliès is that he gave his movies style.  They’re fun to watch.

   This movie begins with Joan receiving her vision.  No introduction, just immediately with the vision.  She goes and tells her father, then the magistrate, etc etc... that part I could follow.  After then there’s a scene of a king being crowned by the Pope, which confuses me, because I don’t know what relevance that has to the Joan of Arc story.  Then in the next scene Joan is captured during a siege.

   The siege scene is actually pretty spectacular, all things considered.  It’s shot in front of a matte painting, which looks surprisingly realistic considering how obviously fake it looks (if that makes any sense at all).  First Joan is pulled off from a horse and dragged inside the doors of the castle.  The French army pulls down the palisade, jumps into the mote and throws ladders against the castle wall, and climb all over it like a swarm of ants.

   Afterwards, Joan is condemned to death by Bishop Cauchon—and if you want further proof that the bishop is evil, he is flanked in the scene by two members of the Ku Klux Klan!  

   Damn those Klansmen!  I sure hope we’ve seen the last of those guys, *wink wink*.  Anyway, Joan is then burned, and ascends into heaven where she receives the Triforce of Wisdom.

 

   An interesting thing about the aesthetic of this movie is that some scenes—such as when an army marches into the city, or when Joan is being burned at the stake—resemble an old medieval woodcut in the way they’re framed and cluttered with characters, with the most important person placed in the center (and here, also color-tinted).  Maybe that’s how all movies looked in 1900, I’m not sure, but I like to think it was an intentional decision of Méliès since he was making a medieval period piece.

   Joan is played by Jeanne d’Alcy, wife of the director Georges Méliès, who often put her in his movies.  Méliès put himself and/or his wife in almost all of the movies he made.  Rest assured, this won’t be the last George Méliès movie I see for this blog.