Jeanne la Pucelle II – Les prisons (1994) - film review

After her victory at Orleans, Joan of Arc is emboldened to continue her assault against the English armies.  Despite the ambivalence of the Dauphin and his advisers, she galvanises her troops and victory follows victory.  Soon a path is cleared to Reims, where the Dauphin may be crowned Charles VII, King of France.   But the war is far from over.  Joan knows that the English will not be beaten until she has taken Paris, the greatest challenge she has faced so far.  But the town is well defended and the King no longer has much enthusiasm for war.  Having commanded Joan to give up her attack on Paris, Charles negotiates a treaty with his old enemies, the Burgundians, so that peace may once again prevail across France.   Deprived of her once loyal companions in arms, Joan continues her campaign against the English, with diminishing success.  Captured by the Burgundians at Compiègne, she is sold to the English by Jean de Luxembourg.  Joan is put on trial for heresy and is told that unless she renounces her misguided beliefs she will be burnt as a sorceress.  Appalled by this prospect, Joan has no choice but to abjure.  And so begins her hellish period in captivity at the hands of the English, the prelude to her brutal martyrdom...

The second part of Jacques Rivette’s epic five and half hour long account of the life and death of Joan of Arc picks up where the first part ended and follows the tragic decline of Joan from her great victories against the English to her ignominious execution at Rouen.  Despite its daunting length, Jeanne la Pucelle II – Les prisons is easily one of Rivette’s most compelling and perfectly constructed films, its austere presentation and naturalistic performances giving it a harrowing sense of reality that is rarely achieved in historical dramas.

As in the first part, Jeanne la Pucelle I – Les Batailles, the film disappoints only in its battle sequences , which are borderline ridiculous.  It is hard not to cringe at the depiction of Joan’s assault on Paris, in which the heroine fearlessly leads an army of six or seven not very convincing soldiers to an inevitable defeat.  Thankfully, most of the battles are narrated rather than enacted and so Rivette conceals his budgetary constraints more effectively here than in the first part.   Indeed, there are a few sequences which make this appear to be a lavish production.  Most spectacular is the coronation scene, a stunning piece of pomp and pageantry which makes a stark contrast with the bleak austerity seen in the rest of the film.

However, what makes this film so powerful, so memorable, is not its grand set-piece but the accumulation of the more intimate scenes that explore the psychology and personality of the principal character.  Rivette suggests that Joan’s ability to motivate her armies came not from a personal disorder (such as a rampaging hormonal imbalance or a wild Napoleon complex) but rather from the more noble human qualities – her humanity, her faith and her pride in her nation.  In an outstanding performance, Sandrine Bonnaire portrays Joan not as a single-minded headstrong warrior but as an ordinary young woman who finds herself in an extraordinary position through what she believes to be a divine calling.

It is the ordinariness of this characterisation of Joan that makes her fall from grace all the more heartrending.  Where other film portrayals of Joan of Arc fall down is in failing to present the central character as a convincing human being – some depict a fearless warmonger, others a saint.  Rivette’s Joan is likely to be much nearer to historical fact, an ordinary girl who was driven by an unfaltering belief in her vocation, someone who had the personal qualities to win the respect and support of anyone, but who was perhaps too naive and trusting to avoid ending up as a pawn in a cruel game of political intrigue.  Jacques Rivette’s film is certainly the most thorough and realistic screen account of the Joan of Arc story to date.  It may also be fair to say that it is the most authoratative, the one that gives us the truest portrayal of the great historical heroine who is known simply as The Maid.

© James Travers 2010

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