Santa Juana

The Joan of Arc story is always a hard one to deal with, especially for skeptics. Did she really hear voices, divinely inspired, that put the burden of liberating France on her 17 year old shoulders? Or should she have been locked in a loony bin?

I'm not really sure that any other culture than the French ought to be telling her story, inevitably the interpretation will fall short of the mark. It falls short here because we have two diametrically opposed viewpoints working on the treatment.

The key to this film is that it is adapted from a play by George Bernard Shaw by Graham Greene. So we have the writing of a Fabian Socialist being interpreted by one very Catholic writer. I think there's a great deal more Greene than Shaw.

Shaw gets his innings here, but I think Graham Greene dominates the film. If he had lived I'm sure Shaw would not have approved.

Charles VIII in history or as portrayed by Richard Widmark here or Jose Ferrer in the Ingrid Bergman film about Joan of Arc, is not the noblest of monarchs. If you are a good Catholic, what he did was going against the will of the Deity. Otherwise though what he tries to do in consolidating his gains makes perfect good sense.

It's funny that I did a review of Olivier's Henry V which viewed from the English point of view which shows how the French got in the situation they were in. What happens afterwards is that Henry V dies quite suddenly like Alexander the Great and England with an infant monarch and fifty year plus struggle for power implodes internally.

Before he died however Charles VII disowned his son the Dauphin and blessed the marriage of Henry V to his daughter Katherine with the provision that Henry succeed Charles VII as King. The French for good reason do not list the English Henry as one of their kings.

Enter Joan of Arc whose visions inspire an army and a nation. As played by Jean Seberg she's in the right age group to be sure. But I think Ingrid Bergman being the far more skilled professional carries it off better in her film. Ditto for Jose Ferrer instead of Richard Widmark. The best acted parts in this film are Anton Walbrook as Cauchon the Bishop who presided over the trial and the clever and serpentine John Gielgud as the Earl of Warwick.

Maybe if Otto Preminger had chosen to film pure Shaw, Saint Joan would have been better received.

Graham Greene wrote this movie version of George Bernard Shaw's play for the screen. Nineteen-year-old Jean Seberg made her movie debut here in the title role. She is engaging as the young Maid of Orleans who dresses as a boy and wants to be taken seriously as a soldier who hears voices from the saints in heaven. While watching this movie, it's important to remember that the characterization of Joan of Arc varies widely from the crazy Joan Pucelle, as characterized in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part I, to a total otherworldly religious victim as seen in Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent classic, La Passion et la Mort de Jeanne d'Arc.

Shaw wanted to present his Joan differently and this movie is about Shaw's Joan. Preminger and Greene present a noble effort of Shaw's play. It is entertaining in that it tells a good story without over romanticizing Joan nor over vilifying her chief executioner, Cauchon (Anton Walbrook). Dunois, Bastard of Orleans (Richard Todd) supports Joan's efforts and serves as her fellow soldier-in-arms. Richard Widmark--as the Dauphin that Joan makes Charles VII--plays his role as a childish clown. Finally, (Sir) John Gielgud admirably presents the English side of this story as he portrays Warwick. This movie is quite worth while--especially for Shaw fans.

Joan of Arc is probably the most extraordinary character in French history.So introducing fantastic elements in the screenplay makes sense.There are so many mysterious things about the Maid of Orleans ,although,thanks to the manuscript of her trial,she 's the most known character of the Middle Ages.BUt this woman definitely eludes human

Otto Preminger did not commit sacrilege when he showed Joan reappearing one night in Charles the seventh's bedroom ,with other dramatis personae:bishop Cauchon,Dunois and the soldier who made a cross for the heroine with two pieces of wood just before she died."They cleared your name" the king says "Can you unburn me?" she says.Robert Shaw 's vision of Joan is not unlike that of Jean Anouilh in "l'alouette":Anouilh ended his play on a glorious note:he demolished the stake and he brought back Joan in Reims cathedral.

I sincerely believe that Otto Preminger's movie has been unfairly dismissed :in my native France,they say it's a static movie ,and however,I had never the impression to be watching a filmed stage production.To my mind ,it's the best Joan of Arc ,with the staggering exception of Dreyer's masterpiece ,of course,which will probably never surpassed.But all the others ,Bresson,Fleming,Rosselini,Besson (Besson???),Rivette ,et al,cannot hold a candle to Preminger:his Joan is a woman of flesh and blood and Jean Seberg (debut) had a strong presence .But the stand-out is definitely Richard Widmark :his fans won't recognize him,particularly in the sequences where he appears as the old king at the end of the road;but he gives a very fine portrayal of Charles the seventh ,probably outré -this king was finally a smart one :he knew when war had to give way to negotiation,which Joan could not understand.But watching Widmark the tough guy of many a western or a film noir playing hopscotch is just a joy.He easily outshines such luminaries as Jose Ferrer,in Fleming 's version or John Malkovich ,in Besson's video game.

There are funny anachronisms:"this horse cost 16 FRANCS" (the franc came much later);or Joan calling Gilles De Rais "Bluebeard" :Charles Perrault ,admittedly inspired by De Rais ,wrote his fairy tale more than two centuries later.But it's not a problem:Joan will come back after her death,and she will know the whole French history ,because ,unlike her contemporaries,she's eternal.The relationship Joan/Dunois is wonderfully treated :it's some kind of love story ,and seeing the young maid mother him brings something romantic .

One can regret a detail:it's not because she was afraid of prison for life that Joan was relapsed :it's because they took away from her her woman's clothes and thus forced her to dress up again as a man.It' minor ;Shaw's lines ,depicting these foolish things which Joan could not live without,if she were buried forever in a hole ,are deeply poetic.

I say it again:one of the best films about Joan Of Arc.

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.

Most of the comments made on this film suggest that the writers have neither read nor seen the George Bernard Shaw play on which it is based. Shaw in "St. Joan," as in every single one of his plays, is all about talk. It's impossible to make an action movie out of a Shaw play without doing it irremediable violence. "St. Joan" is a play about Nationalism and Protestantism, ideas that did not even exist in the period when the play is set. Shaw's St. Joan IS a French nationalist, which is what makes her an anathema to the British. Shaw's St. Joan IS a Protestant, inspired directly by the spirit of God, un-mediated by the Church, and that is why she is an anathema to the Catholic authorities. Preminger's "St. Joan" is an adaptation of the play and, because the play (in important respects) utterly defies film conventions, the movie is mediocre. Anyone who wants to understand "St. Joan" as Shaw conceived her needs either to read or see the play, preferably both. Unfortunately, "St. Joan" is rarely performed these days, partly because Shaw has fallen out of fashion but also because it takes an extraordinary young actress to perform convincingly as Shaw's Maid, a warrior child whose voices speak common sense to her, , and there aren't too many of those around. If a director wishes to make another FILM about Jean d'Arc, as someone, somewhere, some time will undoubtedly want to do, Shaw's play is not the place to look. It belongs to the stage or the page, not the movies.