Saint Joan (1957)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Mankind has always interfered in the individual's right to have a one on one relationship with God in a way which they do not understand. George Bernard Shaw's play asks the question whether or not organized religion has the right to call someone a heretic because they have been given the gift of hearing God's voice and trying to spread their message in a way which the church doesn't approve. Like "The Song of Bernadette" and "The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima", it is a woman who is the vessel of God's word, a taboo back in the day, especially in Joan of Arc's era. The fact that she dresses in man's clothes also makes her a target, especially when she goes into battle wearing a suit of armor and carrying a sword.This is a difficult film to assess, and even more difficult to get into, but once the message does get through and you accept Jean Seberg in the part (which many believe she was miscast in), the film will grab your soul and you will feel the emotional pain Joan must have felt as she realizes what denying her quest means in her spiritual journey. Seberg's Joan is much more waif like than Ingrid Bergman's was, and she seems more age appropriate. Of course, there are those who are going to use her lack of acting experience against her, even though her vulnerability does shine through amongst the more experienced actors. The fact that she does appear to be an emotionally fragile 19 year old works totally for her as she must face the variety of zealots and chauvinistic men who hold her future in their hands. It certainly was daring of director Otto Preminger to cast her, and in various aspects of her performance, it is a wise choice rather to have cast someone more well known like Natalie Wood.On the other hand, the presence of such veteran actors as Richard Widmark, Felix Aylmer, John Gielgud and Anton Walbrook add authority as the men, so her almost emotionless performance becomes more profound as their judgments against her get more and more authoritarian. This is a film which builds emotionally as her fate becomes more sealed, filmed sort of like Orson Welles' "MacBeth" and Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" in a dark, dream-like state that is half dream, half nightmare. The minutes leading up to her execution are profoundly intense, and the burning itself is almost unbearable.Told as if a ghostly visit after her demise, "Saint Joan" is perhaps not the definitive film version of Shaw's classic play, but for what Preminger did, it deserves to be noticed more than the mediocre reviews it initially received. Pretty much every character is given a chance to identify the fact that they are aware that if they are revealed to have been wrong about her, they know they are damned, and yet Joan's ghostly return offers a chance of atonement for some, damnation for others. At any rate, it is one of those spiritual dramas which deserves to open discussion on many fronts, especially with the idea that God speaks to everybody in different ways, that God does show many faces, and that as human beings with weaknesses, strengths, vulnerabilities and passions, we can never understand why God chooses to deal with humanity the way he does.

She has been remembered in history as the peasant girl who was accused of heresy for hearing voices telling her to drive the English out of France, during part of a time in what would be remembered as the Hundred Years' War. But to a lesser extent, she would be remembered for eventually having her name cleared and be made a saint in 1920.It is the story which began in 1456, 25 years after the trial of Joan of Arc with the aging King Charles VII (Richard Widmark) searching around the palace for his subjects, before the ghost of Joan (Jean Seberg) appears in front of him. He would recall how she entered his life as a 17-year-old peasant girl arriving at the palace when he was still a Dauphin in Chinon but still being constantly bullied by others, telling him she had heard the voices of Saints Catherine and Margaret who told her to lead the army against the English at Orleans. But before Joan found her way to the palace in a soldier's armour, she managed to convince the local squire Captain Robert de Baudricourt (Archie Duncan), who initially had his doubts over Joan, to let her lead an army.Among those who helped out in Joan's quest is Jean de Dunios, Bastard of Orleans (Richard Todd), or whom she always calls him Jack. It turns out despite after Charles had been crowned king, what Joan has done has earned her enemies in high places, even as she became popular with the masses, grew in confidence and having apparent supernatural powers. Jack would come to be one of the very few who believed in Joan. Joan wants Charles to retake Paris from the English but she was stopped by the newly-crowned king himself and the archbishop (Finlay Currie) who threatened her that she would be disowned by the church, which she has always put her faith in for her quests, if she did so. Her decision to still march on to Paris would be paid with a heavy price when she would be eventually captured by the English and be tried.There are times when it feels like the story has been disjointed as the film progresses, as what happened in the opening scene shows up in the epilogue of the original version of the 1923 play written by George Bernard Shaw which acted as the base for the film itself. As for those who are not familiar with the story of Joan of Arc, it can look confusing with no background information showing on the screen at the pivotal moments in the life of Joan, leading up to the trial itself.When it comes to what the film might had implied in terms of what was to blame for Joan's final fate before she was absolved of her original 'crime' it is still up to the viewer to decide whether it is what the film implies or not, but without any form of prenotion, that is if they have some kind of prior knowledge.Overall, it is a film to help especially those who are not aware of the story of Joan of Arc and what led her to do what she did despite her background and what would to be of her final fate before being made a saint, despite the confusing elements in the film itself in terms of how it is presented.

This movie is a should-be classic. It's not perfect, certainly. The pacing, while perfect for the stage, is in movie form slow as a tortoise with arthritic knees. Jean Seberg is misdirected to be too sweet and too gentle. She fully shows enough acting talent, skill, and craft to convincingly play the clever, passionate, and confident Joan, but, unfortunately, the director missed the point of the character. George Bernard Shaw is my favorite playwright. In no other play has his dialog been more sharp, nor the lines more musical. However, processing this film requires that you look at it as a lawyer. This movie is a case, and the viewer is the judge. That is how this picture is to be enjoyed. 7/10.

This is an under-rated version of the story of the farm girl who fought the British and helped kick them out of France. Seberg is nowhere near as bad in this movie as reputation would suggest (and looks great with a way cool cropped hair-do), and there are good performances from Geilgud, Richard Widmark, and Richard Todd. It does have to be said, though, that this is not a movie for action-lovers - the centrepiece of Joan leading the troops in the liberation of Orleans, for example, is replaced by a fade-to-black! The movie is also quite stagey and it is stylistically easy to think it was made at least ten years earlier than it's 1957 release date. The movie makes a nice change if you are fed up with the Ingrid Bergman version, though.