Trial of Joan of Arc
with actress Florence Delay Carrez in attendance (!)
Pacific Cinematheque
Friday April 3, 7:30pm
France 1962. Director: Robert Bresson
Cast: Florence Carrez (Florence Delay), Jean-Claude Fourneau, Marc Jacquier, Roger Honorat, Jean Gillibert
Pacific Cinémathèque and the Consulate General of France are pleased to present a Special Film Evening.
FLORENCE DELAY IN PERSON! │ Novelist, actress, distinguished member of the Académie française, and star of Bresson’s 1962 masterpiece Trial of Joan of Arc.
IMPORTED 35mm PRINT! │ One of film’s giants, Robert Bresson was master of a spare, rigorous, intensely metaphysical cinema (famously called "transcendental" by Paul Schrader) that explored, with rare poetry and purity, the human struggle for grace and redemption. His startling, searing take on one of cinema’s most filmed stories is based — like Dreyer’s 1929 silent masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc — on the actual transcripts of Joan's trial, here distilled into the very essence of the spare Bressonian aesthetic, and focusing with unsettling power on Joan’s physical humiliation. (British critic Gilbert Adair has described the film as "Bresson’s essay in sadomasochistic voyeurism.") Trial of Joan of Arc won a Jury Special Prize at Cannes in 1962, and was much admired by the filmmakers of French New Wave, and by Tarkovsky, who cited it as a formative influence. "Perhaps the ultimate expression of Bresson’s unique cinematic voice...In the austere documenting of Joan's imprisonment and trial, physical objects — chains, stones, wall, windows — become metaphors for her spiritual isolation and sounds — the scratching of a pen during her hearing — contribute to the minimalist musicality of the experience" (James Monaco). "For the first time in film history, one feels that Joan was really burnt" (Richard Roud). B&W, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 65 mins.
"Bresson...creates one of the greatest female characters ever put on celluloid." BBC
Trailer
Japanese poster
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