As someone from 2013 to whom the idea of a silent movie is
about as alien as the idea of sending a telegraph or a smoke signal, I was
struck by Dryer’s ability to communicate visually with pacing, camera angles,
and visual symbols. Because I watched a version on youtube that was not
accompanied by a score (they cited the fact that the original has been lost),
and since I did not discover the English subtitles until about halfway through
the film, I forced myself to look for meaning in the faces of each character,
the arrangement of the set, and the detail that went into each shot. One of the
most striking scenes in this respect is the scene in Joan’s cell where her
accusers are attempting to forge a letter from the king and trick her into
signing it. The cross in the window, the handmade crown in Joan’s hands, and
the movement of the camera play into the idea presented in Blaetz’s article
that Dryer’s telling of the tale is focused on the struggle between the individual
and the “repressive institutions” of the Church and the State.
Consider the sequence above, where Joan is
alone in her cell (1). She is distraught, contemplating her predicament (2),
but suddenly, something catches her attention (3). It’s the shadow of a cross,
cast down from the window above (4). As an individual “on a mission from God”,
she views this as providential, and takes great solace in the symbol (5). In
Joan’s world, it is her center. She takes her stand on what she feels like God
is telling her and not what the appointed officials of God tell her to believe.
It is the cross in the window, not the cross in the church, that captures her
attention.
Likewise, after the shadow of the cross
appears, she turns her attention to the handmade crown in her hands. Similar to
Christ’s crown of thorns, Joan’s crown is not of glittering gold, but handmade
of some sort of vine. In this scene, she is not a conquering warrior to the
outward eye, but she is something of a spiritual conqueror, much in the sense
that Christ said in his trial, “My kingdom is not of this world”. Joan exists
on a higher plane than the political authority of the day.
The cross and the crown that have real significance to Joan
are not the church or the government, but her own personal religious and moral conviction.
Dreyer presents further evidence of this in the same scene. Recall the solace
that Joan found in the shadow of the cross, and look at the way she interacts
with the other occurrences of the cross (the church) and the crown (the state):
Here, the officer (the state) is literally and
metaphorically twisting Joan’s arm to get her to abandon her loyalty to her personal
religious convictions. Afterwards, the church steps in, but not to offer
spiritual comfort. The priest returns, but only to give Joan her ring back and
prolong her torturous trial.
Joan looks not to these earthly figures, but to a higher
power. This is seen clearly in the camera shot when the officer and the priest
enter. The camera deliberately pans upward, above these “false” authorities to
a higher plane - Joan’s individual perception of morality and truth.
- Corey Landry
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