The 1928 French silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc is beautiful: amazing and powerful. Suitable for teens (certainly acceptable for anyone mature enough to watch the Passion of the Christ - though this film is mature mostly because of its intensity).
It might be worthwhile to discuss the historical position of the Church's relationship with Joan of Arc and the intentions of the filmmaker who, focusing on Joan's trial and death, might be viewed as having some degree of an agenda. It would also be fair to consider the controversies surrounding the Passion of the Christ for providing a similar, limited focus.
The DVD (available from Netflix) provides English subtitles and a choice of no audio or a background score.
The commentary was quite interesting and helpful. I love how the Danish film expert refers to her in the familiar French/Danish Jeanne (sounds like Shen) in this English commentary.
The Passion of Joan of Arc was listed on the Vatican list of best films.
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3 comments:
Good choice!
I also posted about this movie on my blog: http://hicatholicmom.blogspot.com/2007/07/passion-of-joan-of-arc.html
and someone left the following link after reading my post:
http://www.maidofheaven.com/ where you can other videos on St. Joan of Arc.
Thanks for mentioning the intensity of this film. We were not aware of how intense it was and some younger kids horribly upset!
We saw this movie about two weeks ago, It was very movie, especially with the addtion of a the score(not the original. We enjoy silent films alot, the only unfortunate thing abouthis film was we do not speak French, and could not read the lips of the characters as we often do in silent films.
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