The story of Joan of Arc acquired mythic status even as it was unfolding and reported in the fifteenth century, and so it is difficult and possibly undesirable to render it artistically in anything like the terms we in the twentieth century would label as realism. But behind the blazing signs and symbols lies a complex, fascinating history; a film is only one kind of gateway to that story.

     Probably born in 1412, Joan of Arc grew up amid the peak of a conflict between rival factions for control of France. Known as "The Hundred Years War" it had begun with the English King Edward III laying claim to France in 1337 and reached its apogee with the horrific Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

     France seemed irreconcilably split between rival parties; on one side the followers of the Duke of Burgundy loyal to English King Henry V (and following his death, loyal to the Regent, the Duke of Bedford), and on the other side the "Armagnacs' - followers of the Duke of Orleans loyal to the so called Dauphin, Charles VII.

     Into this struggle came a teenage girl from the south of France. Driven to her mission by the luminous voices she had heard throughout her adolescence, she managed to convince (and he wanted to be convinced) Charles, the unanointed King, of a divine validity to both her mission and his cause.

     Charles gave troops to Joan, regal legitimacy to himself, and in some surprising upsets Joan and the Armagnac captains managed to raise a British siege of Orleans and mount a successful campaign up the Loire river.

     The campaign reached the city of Rheims, where, although still eyed with suspicion by some ecclesiastical and civil authorities, she stood beside this often doubting Dauphin as he was anointed with sacred oil and crowned a rightful King of France.

     If Joan felt a sense of inevitability concerning victory, the cautious Charles preferred to negotiate for time with the rival Burgundians and British. Joan did not lack fervor in her mission, so with other sympathetic captains she continued to mount minor attacks on British positions until an unfortunate retreat at a small town called Margny resulted in her capture.

     Captured by a French Burgundian, she was soon ransomed to the English, and after months of being shuttled around in captivity was put on trial for heresy by an Ecclesiastical court at Rouen, a court sanctioned by the Church authorities of the pro-Burgundian University of Paris. Over the course of nearly five months she held firm to her convictions despite ruthless examination, but whether through illness or exhaustion, she could finally hold out no longer and was brought outside the prison to a cemetery which stood in for the site of her execution and was read the articles condemning her.

     She recanted. She signed a document of abjuration, confessing that she was a heretic, sorceress and schismatic, stating that she had acted under diabolical and delusional influence.

     What followed is not entirely clear. Her abjuration had resulted in the imposition of a life sentence to prison. Her enemies were not pleased; they had wanted to see her burn.  Whether through physical threat, trickery, or her own will, within three days she was seen again in the male clothing she had agreed to discard. When questioned on this point of great contention, she replied that her abjuration had been signed for fear of death and the flames, that her voices had told her to reject the abjuration that she had signed, that in truth God had sent her on her mission.

     In giving this reply, she could now be judged a relapsed heretic -  "a rotten member of the true vine" as her
inquisitors' final words to her went, and so was handed over to secular authority - a legality although a mere formality, and at the end of May in 1431, she was led into the marketplace in Rouen and, at the probable age of nineteen, burned at the stake. 

     Within five years of her death, France was no longer under English rule, and by 1456 Joan of Arc had - in yet another series of examinations - been posthumously 'rehabilitated.' Her history was becoming legend. My all too brief biographical portrait above, while hopefully accurate, fails to do two things: It cannot convey that sense of the mythic which we seem to need in order to 'feel' the pull of historical forces (we're on the outside looking in) and it cannot put us in the minds of persons foreign and remote in time from us (the inside looking out). Perhaps only art can attempt to achieve this.

Sam Wells

     Although my approach to the story of Joan of Arc in WIRED ANGEL is artistically radical, symbolic and interpretative, it is grounded in history.

     The literature on Joan of Arc and her milieu is exhaustive, but I will mention a few books that I found particularly useful and interesting. Bear in mind this is the tip of the iceberg!

     Note: Some of these may be out of print, but still available in libraries.

Warner, Marina. Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism. University of California Press, 2000.

     A great introduction to the subject; contains a short but concise biography of Joan, and then continues with a history of the representation of Joan in literature, drama, art, film, etc.

Gies, Frances. Joan of Arc: The Legend and the Reality. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

     This is probably the most straightforward account of Joan's life, very readable and thorough.

Sackville-West, Vita. Saint Joan of Arc. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

     I find considerable wit in Sackville-West's endearing Joan biography; she's more of a literary stylist than other biographers, and for that reason you may find it thought-provoking - I did.

Pernoud, Regine. Joan of Arc by Herself and Her Witnesses translated from the French by Edward Hyams. New York: Stein and Day, 1996.

     Much if not most of what we know about Joan comes from transcripts of her trial for heresy and the posthumous trial of rehabilitation. Pernoud constructs her book around these documents, so this telling is a close step to primary sources.

Pernoud, Regine and Marie-Véronique Clin. Joan of Arc: Her Story. Translated and revised by Jeremy du Quesnay Adams. Edited by Bonnie Wheeler. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books. Cambridge Mass: Distributed by MIT Press, 1991.

     This does not deal with Joan, but is a fascinating book on Medieval concepts of the body, with an emphasis on these concepts as held by the religious, especially women. This book turned out to be quite influential as I was conceptualizing my film. All of Caroline Walker Bynum's books on women and Medieval religion are deep, serious studies and well worth reading.

Cohn, Norman Rufus Colin. Europe's Inner Demons. London: Pimlico, 1993.

     Although not about Joan of Arc, Norman Cohn explores the mindset that lead to things like the Inqisition,
in the context of the political and cultural forces at play in the Middle Ages.