The Passion of Joan of Arc with Live Score (1928) (PG)
SCREENING AS PART OF FROM PAGE TO SCREEN FILM FESTIVAL
Tickets: Adult £12 | Cons & U25’s £10
Dreyer’s colossus of silent film, ranked 21st in Sight & Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time, is an unmissable cinematic experience, dominated by Renée Falconetti’s raw and luminous performance as Saint Joan, heroine of French resistance. Rudolph Maté’s crisp expressionist cinematography contrasts looming close-ups of Joan’s exquisite suffering and rapture with the twisted fanaticism of her persecutors. That Dreyer’s transcendent masterpiece survived to maintain its standing as a colossus of cinema history is a miracle in itself. The huge set of medieval castle and town nearly bankrupted the studio. The master negatives were twice destroyed by fire. A copy of the director’s cut surfaced at an Oslo mental hospital in 1981, still in its 1928 packaging.
We are showing a digitally restored version of this cut, with live musical accompaniment by Andrew Goldberg (piano) and Ricky Romain (sitar).
Developing a musical accompaniment for such a visually powerful film has been a fascinating challenge for musicians Andrew and Ricky. ‘The first consideration was how to allow the imagery in the film – which is extraordinarily stark – to speak for itself and not impose a musical score over it’ says Andrew Goldberg. ‘We wanted to adopt a minimal approach using improvisation to enhance the unfolding of the story, allowing the imagery and sounds to seek within the listening audience a ‘poetic’ response to these artistic disciplines coming together.’
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