圣女贞德蒙难记

2015.10.16在里昂卢米埃尔电影节上看了最新修复版，管风琴配乐。片尾字幕时显示，本次修复使用是1981年在挪威奥斯陆发现的拷贝。回来一查，发现《圣女贞德蒙难记》的版本问题甚是复杂，现综合各种材料总结如下：

1.电影于1928年4月21日在哥本哈根的Paladsteatret首映（版本一），六个月后，即1928年10月25日在巴黎首映。德莱叶为此片拍摄了85000米的素材，最终剪辑用了2200米左右的素材。

2.1928年12月，柏林仓库起火，版本一底片被毁。德莱叶遂与制片人决定用剩余的素材重剪影片（版本二）。第二版和第一版只存在细微差别，用德莱叶的话来说，几乎只有他自己和制片人才能看出不同。不过很快，这个版本也毁于大火。

3.1936年，法国电影资料馆馆长亨利·朗格瓦发现了一部分损毁严重的残片。

4. 1952年法国电影作家Lo Duca声称他在巴黎找到了版本二的底片。在此基础上，50年代重新发行了《圣女贞德蒙难记》，并为该片配上了巴赫、维瓦尔第、斯卡拉蒂的音乐。德莱叶本人对这个版本非常不满，给Lo Duca写了一封措辞激烈的信，然并卵。

5. 1960年代，丹麦电影博物馆综合流传于世的各种不完美残片，拼凑推出过据说是最接近1928年版的版本。

6. 1981年，在一家奥斯陆的精神病院里，竟然不可思议地发现版本一的踪迹。

据考证，1928年4月，片方为了电影首映从巴黎寄了两个拷贝到哥本哈根。此次发现的拷贝即是其中之一，包装完好，上面写有清晰可见的日期、收件人、地址，盒内更附上了当时丹麦的审查意见书，应该是在哥本哈根的首映结束后，寄往挪威的。吊诡的是，这一拷贝是寄给一位名叫Harald Arnesen的内科大夫的。目前只知道他是一位历史爱好者，对法国革命史尤其感兴趣。但考虑到这部电影从未在挪威公映过，为何他有渠道得到拷贝，还是一个谜。

这一最新发现的版本和之前市面上流通的版本有些许不同，是目前被认为最完整最接近原版的，之后因为种种原因被删除的几个镜头也得到了保留，比如给贞德放血的特写、吮吸母亲乳头的孩子、火刑烟雾中贞德的侧影等。

 
2012年Eureka Entertainment修复发行的《圣女贞德蒙难记》dvd和蓝光，收录了2种帧速的“导演剪辑版”（20fps, 24fps）和Lo Duca版。应该是市面上能看到的最好的碟片版本了吧。

没想到在默片时代居然导演会选择庭战场面来展现圣女贞德的光辉，对比一下吕克贝松就可以知道，这样的挑战是何其艰险了。本来需要大量的对话场景，只能由字幕来代替，人物的脸成为银幕上面积最大的地方，开始的时候真有些不耐烦，因为贞德不但总是以华丽的四十五度角仰视（与之相对的是英国教士的四十五度角俯视），还歪着脖子，就像波提切利的维纳斯一样，难道是中风了？不过接着看下去，感觉慢慢平复，这位法国历史上的女英雄没有如我国宣传片一样的被罩在万丈金光中，也没有举手握拳大喊口号，更没有交党费的絮叨，她哭泣、她恐惧、她屈服……然而她最终选择了光荣！

    一个19岁的女人，目不识丁，精干的短发，身着男装，胸怀笃定的信仰，坚信自己是上帝之女，她来到人世间，是为了用自己的殉难来换取伟大的胜利和人类的救赎。在威逼利诱和严刑逼供下，她始终不肯放弃自己的立场，即使受尽折磨也依然大声的呼喊：即使你们毁灭了我的肉身，我的灵魂也依然与上帝同在。最后，她葬身火海，为了自己纯洁美好的信仰牺牲了生命。
   与之对抗的，与其说是一群人，不如说是一个政权、一个国家。中世纪的大国，政教结合，宗教已经成为一种洗脑和统治的手段，官方把宗教信仰变成一种繁文缛节，一种衡量人们是否愿意被统治的标准。所有与官方宣传相背离的人都会受到严苛的惩罚，而贞德就成了这样的一件牺牲品。
他们所捍卫的，其实不是真正意义上的宗教信仰，而是害怕像贞德一样的“异教徒”和离经叛道者危及到自身的利益。他们个个巧言令色，面目狰狞，诡计多端，把一个手无寸铁、目不识丁的女人迫害致死。
   这本身就是一个残忍的故事，用我们现在的眼光来审视，可能觉得不可思议，因为说了几句“妖言惑众”的话就被判火刑，可是放在当时的时代背景下，这样的故事也许还有很多。你看看那些宗教首领每次发问的问题就能知道，其实他们本身对于宗教的了解也未见有多么深远，他们根本没有资格去审判一个如此坚韧的信仰者。可是，个人意志与国家意的对抗，自古以来就是后者占上风，只有矛盾积累到即将爆发的程度，才有可能让前者有胜利的机会。当然也不乏敢站出来维护真理的人，可是这样的人太少，他们手里也没有武器。
    贞德死了，她临走前还祈求上帝，绝望和落寞的眼神，看着就让人难过。
    整个电影要讲的，其实就是真信仰与伪信仰的对抗、个人与国家的对抗，它充满了人文色彩和政治寓意。
   让电影打动我们的不只是故事本身，还有导演和演员的精彩呈现。
   作为一部早期的默片，它没有台词，关键性的语言全都用全屏的方式呈现出来，很多情节都需要通过演员的动作和神情去捕捉。好在，镜头的运用恰如其分，没有一笔是多余的，蒙太奇式的镜头把演员的表现都进行了定格和放大，甚至她的一个微妙的表情和眼神我们都可以清晰的感受到，而那些反派角色的表现也相当的出彩，尤其是几个狱卒调戏贞德的那段戏份，丑恶的嘴脸被表现的淋漓尽致。
   演员的表现上，女主角玛利亚·法奥康涅蒂的表现可以说非常的出神入化，她通过面部表情，时而充满希望，时而满脸无助，丰富的变化让人能够在只有背景音乐的情况下跟着她深入到故事当中，产生情感上的共鸣，而且一点都不做作，非常自然，让人佩服。
   这部电影在整个电影史上具有举足轻重的地位，被誉为“电影史上探索人类灵魂的密度最大的一部影片，这样的经典之作，需要我们用心去观赏，才能看出其中的况味和妙处。
     

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970216/REVIEWS08/401010350/1023

Roger Ebert / February 16, 1997

You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti. In a medium without words, where the filmmakers believed that the camera captured the essence of characters through their faces, to see Falconetti in Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc'' (1928) is to look into eyes that will never leave you.

Falconetti (as she is always called) made only this single movie. "It may be the finest performance ever recorded on film,'' wrote Pauline Kael. She was an actress in Paris when she was seen on the stage of a little boulevard theater by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968), the Dane who was one of the greatest early directors. It was a light comedy, he recalled, but there was something in her face that struck him: "There was a soul behind that facade.'' He did screen tests without makeup, and found what he sought, a woman who embodied simplicity, character and suffering.

Dreyer had been given a large budget and a screenplay by his French producers, but he threw out the screenplay and turned instead to the transcripts of Joan's trial. They told the story that has become a legend: of how a simple country maid from Orleans, dressed as a boy, led the French troops in their defeat of the British occupation forces. How she was captured by French loyal to the British and brought before a church court, where her belief that she had been inspired by heavenly visions led to charges of heresy. There were 29 cross-examinations, combined with torture, before Joan was burned at the stake in 1431. Dreyer combined them into one inquisition, in which the judges, their faces twisted with their fear of her courage, loomed over her with shouts and accusations.

If you go to the Danish Film Museum in Copenhagen you can see Dreyer's model for the extraordinary set he built for the film. He wanted it all in one piece (with movable walls for the cameras), and he began with towers at four corners, linked with concrete walls so thick they could support the actors and equipment. Inside the enclosure were chapels, houses and the ecclesiastical court, built according to a weird geometry that put windows and doors out of plumb with one another and created discordant visual harmonies (the film was made at the height of German Expressionism and the French avant-garde movement in art).

It is helpful to see the model in Copenhagen, because you will never see the whole set in the movie. There is not one single establishing shot in all of "The Passion of Joan of Arc,'' which is filmed entirely in closeups and medium shots, creating fearful intimacy between Joan and her tormentors. Nor are there easily read visual links between shots. In his brilliant shot-by-shot analysis of the film, David Bordwell of the University of Wisconsin concludes: "Of the film's over 1,500 cuts, fewer than 30 carry a figure or object over from one shot to another; and fewer than 15 constitute genuine matches on action.''
What does this mean to the viewer? There is a language of shooting and editing that we subconsciously expect at the movies. We assume that if two people are talking, the cuts will make it seem that they are looking at one another. We assume that if a judge is questioning a defendant, the camera placement and editing will make it clear where they stand in relation to one another. If we see three people in a room, we expect to be able to say how they are arranged and which is closest to the camera. Almost all such visual cues are missing from "The Passion of Joan of Arc.''

Instead Dreyer cuts the film into a series of startling images. The prison guards and the ecclesiastics on the court are seen in high contrast, often from a low angle, and although there are often sharp architectural angles behind them, we are not sure exactly what the scale is (are the windows and walls near or far?). Bordwell's book reproduces a shot of three priests, presumably lined up from front to back, but shot in such a way that their heads seem stacked on top of one another. All of the faces of the inquisitors are shot in bright light, without makeup, so that the crevices and flaws of the skin seem to reflect a diseased inner life.

Falconetti, by contrast, is shot in softer grays, rather than blacks and whites. Also without makeup, she seems solemn and consumed by inner conviction. Consider an exchange where a judge asks her whether St. Michael actually spoke to her. Her impassive face seems to suggest that whatever happened between Michael and herself was so far beyond the scope of the question that no answer is conceivable.

Why did Dreyer fragment his space, disorient the visual sense and shoot in closeup? I think he wanted to avoid the picturesque temptations of a historical drama. There is no scenery here, aside from walls and arches. Nothing was put in to look pretty. You do not leave discussing the costumes (although they are all authentic). The emphasis on the faces insists that these very people did what they did. Dreyer strips the church court of its ritual and righteousness and betrays its members as fleshy hypocrites in the pay of the British; their narrow eyes and mean mouths assault Joan's sanctity.

For Falconetti, the performance was an ordeal. Legends from the set tell of Dreyer forcing her to kneel painfully on stone and then wipe all expression from her face--so that the viewer would read suppressed or inner pain. He filmed the same shots again and again, hoping that in the editing room he could find exactly the right nuance in her facial expression. There is an echo in the famous methods of the French director Robert Bresson, who in his own 1962 "The Trial of Joan of Arc'' put actors through the same shots again and again, until all apparent emotion was stripped from their performances. In his book on Dreyer, Tom Milne quotes the director: "When a child suddenly sees an onrushing train in front of him, the expression on his face is spontaneous. By this I don't mean the feeling in it (which in this case is sudden fear), but the fact that the face is completely uninhibited.'' That is the impression he wanted from Falconetti.

That he got it is generally agreed. Perhaps it helps that Falconetti never made another movie (she died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1946). We do not have her face in other roles to compare with her face here, and the movie seems to exist outside time (the French director Jean Cocteau famously said it played like "an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn't exist'').

To modern audiences, raised on films where emotion is conveyed by dialogue and action more than by faces, a film like "The Passion of Joan of Arc'' is an unsettling experience--so intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire. Our sympathy is engaged so powerfully with Joan that Dreyer's visual methods--his angles, his cutting, his closeups--don't play like stylistic choices, but like the fragments of Joan's experience. Exhausted, starving, cold, in constant fear, only 19 when she died, she lives in a nightmare where the faces of her tormentors rise up like spectral demons.

Perhaps the secret of Dreyer's success is that he asked himself, "What is this story really about?'' And after he answered that question he made a movie about absolutely nothing else.

An excellent essay by Matthew Dessem on "The Passion of Joan of Arc" here:
http://criterioncollection.blogspot.com/2006/11/62-passion-of-joan-of-arc.html
This is part of his undertaking to watch and write about every film in the Criterion Collection.