The Passion of Joan of Arc

In 1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer filmed *The Passion of Joan of Arc*. It was the first movie in history dedicated to faces—or rather, to *the* Face, as most of the screen time is occupied by close-ups of Renée Falconetti. On one hand, everything is extremely exaggerated and grand, as silent cinema demands. On the other, the camera captures the tiniest expressions of life: Joan’s eye twitches, a young priest (the future founder of the "Theatre of Cruelty," Antonin Artaud) clenches his jaw, and the wrinkled cheeks of the chief judge tremble. A fortune was spent on the set, yet we mostly see white walls. The actors wore no makeup—a revolutionary move for that time—so it seems like the viewer can inspect every pore, every scar. We are literally forced to confront Joan’s tear-streaked face. In search of unusual angles, the cameras were buried underground and mounted in walls—the set resembled a piece of Swiss cheese full of holes. The close-ups slice across the screen, bursting into it, silently screaming and spitting, but also floating and whispering. Now we know—the actors recited real lines from the preserved transcripts of Joan's interrogation.

The original version of the film was lost in a fire, only to miraculously resurface in 1981, in the storage room of a psychiatric clinic.