Film

The Passion of Joan of Arc

This isn't a war epic — it's a face in unbearable close-up for eighty minutes. Dreyer builds the film almost entirely from expressions: Falconetti's wide, unblinking eyes as churchmen circle her with questions designed to break her. Stripped of scenery, near-silent even for silent cinema, it plays as pure interrogation, faith tested until it cracks. Punishing, modern, and still shocking.

TMDb rating4.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are moved by faces more than plot, and love a film that trusts a single performance and tight close-ups to carry an interrogation room full of argument.

Skip it if you need constant action or a lively soundtrack to stay put, since this is mostly talk, long faces and intertitles in one stony room.

What it asks of you: Expect to sit still for barely eighty-one minutes while the camera stays close, watching a face do most of the work and reading every title card.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Joan of Arc1948

Ingrid Bergman's lavish, Technicolor take on the same trial and pyre — the story told with scale and star power instead of Dreyer's suffering face.

But It's reverent to the point of stiffness; the Hollywood polish smooths over the raw terror Dreyer captured.

Joan of Arc poster

The Passion of the Christ2004

Gibson's brutal, unflinching account of Christ's final hours shares Dreyer's fascination with suffering as spectacle and faith proven through pain, filmed with similar unblinking intimacy.

But Extremely graphic and relentless — this is punishment cinema, more ordeal than story.

The Passion of the Christ poster

A Man for All Seasons1966

Thomas More's quiet refusal to bend under church and state pressure mirrors Jeanne's own stubborn integrity — conscience on trial, dressed as costume drama.

But Talky and stately, more interested in legal argument than visual poetry — a very different intensity.

A Man for All Seasons poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Passion of Joan of Arc

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Witch2016

Both put a young woman's private conviction on trial before a community certain it knows God's will — one calls it heresy, the other witchcraft, and both leave you unsure who's right.

A teenage girl in a devout 17th-century family is slowly isolated and doubted by the people meant to protect her — folk horror asking the same question Dreyer does: is she mad, holy, or something else entirely?

But It's horror built on dread and ambiguity rather than history, and the slow pace and thick period dialogue won't suit everyone.

The Witch poster
More like this (8)

Becket1964

Two men locked in a battle between crown and church, ending in martyrdom — Burton and O'Toole make institutional power feel personal and merciless.

But Dense, dialogue-heavy history that assumes patience with 12th-century politics over visceral close-ups.

Becket poster

Dead Man Walking1995

A modern death-row drama fixed on a condemned person's face and soul, asking what faith and mercy mean once the state has already decided the ending.

But Grounded and procedural rather than stylised — you lose Dreyer's expressionism entirely.

Dead Man Walking poster

The Crucible1996

Hysteria, coerced confession, and a young woman caught between accusers claiming divine authority — Salem's trials as a direct echo of Jeanne's interrogation.

But Studio-era gloss and courtroom shouting feel broader and less austere than what you just watched.

The Crucible poster

12 Angry Men1957

No pyre, no church, just a room and the machinery of judgment — the interrogation-chamber tension of Dreyer's film distilled into pure procedural drama.

But Cool and rational where Dreyer is anguished and spiritual; the stakes are legal, not existential.

12 Angry Men poster

Elizabeth1998

A young woman must out-manoeuvre men who wield God and church as weapons against her — Blanchett's queen fighting forces close to the ones that condemned Jeanne.

But A political thriller first, with none of the spiritual intimacy or facial fixation that defines Dreyer's film.

Elizabeth poster

Braveheart1995

The warrior-martyr myth scaled up to Hollywood epic — capture, torture, execution, and a legend born from suffering, in the register Jeanne's story often gets told in.

But Loud, muscular, and sentimental where the original is silent, still, and unbearably intimate — nearly the opposite register.

Braveheart poster

The Trial of Joan of Arc1963

Bresson made this partly as a rebuttal to Dreyer's expressionism — same trial, same martyr, but proof that restraint can wound as deeply as anguish.

Bresson tells the exact same story stripped of all expression — flat voices, static shots, real trial transcripts — and it's just as devastating in a completely opposite way.

But If Dreyer's close-ups felt intense, this feels like the opposite extreme: deliberately cold and almost anti-cinematic by design.

The Trial of Joan of Arc poster

Making a Murderer2015

Swap the ecclesiastical court for a modern one and the tactics barely change: isolate the accused, control the narrative, let institutional certainty stand in for truth.

A real modern interrogation, a real coerced confession, a real system closing ranks around its own verdict — the same machinery of doubt and pressure, just with cameras and lawyers instead of candlelight and bishops.

But Ten hours of legal procedure and news footage — none of the poetry, all of the frustration, and it will make you angry rather than moved.

Making a Murderer poster

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