First Monday Silent Film Series: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Get ready for Easter with our first Monday silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. A French film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dryer and starring Maria Falconetti.

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she’d spoken to God, Jeanne d’Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

The Village Voice ranked it the eighth greatest film of the 20th century in a 2000 poll of critics. In January 2002, the film was ranked 69th on the list of the Top 100 Essential Films of All Time by the National Society of Film Critics. The film was ranked 64th on the list of “100 Greatest Films” by the prominent French magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 2008. The Passion of Joan of Arc has appeared on Sight & Sound magazine’s top ten films poll five times: as number seven in 1952 and 1972, as number ten (Critic’s List) and six (Director’s List) in 1992 and as number nine in 2012 (Critic’s List). The Guardian ranked the film 22nd in its list of 25 greatest arthouse films. In 2010, the Toronto International Film Festival released its “Essential 100” list of films, which merged one list of the 100 greatest films of all time as determined by an expert panel of TIFF curators with another list determined by TIFF stakeholders. The Passion of Joan of Arc was ranked as the most influential film of all time. Her performance was ranked 26th in Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time, the highest of any silent performance on the list.