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I hesitated to make yet another film about Joan of Arc, as I would be following in the footsteps of film masters such as Carl Dreyer & Robert Bresson. But artists have been drawn to this material for five centuries, and the films on Joan date back as early as one from Thomas Edison's studio in 1895 and George Melies' films of 1897 and 1900. My approach to Cinema is for EVERYTHING on the screen to emerge from shadow into light. This pattern happens first, before narrative, before character. Not only in the process of shooting, but in the process of discovering the narrative.
And so, Joan of Arc emerged from the shades, like one of the Greek heroes in Underworld section of the Odyssey, and came to flickering light in the dark, gothic, industrial landscape I had envisioned for WIRED ANGEL.
And I was in her spell. Yet, like a shadow, she remained elusive at first, no matter how many special effects offerings I burned to invoke her, to illuminate her. But our settings and sets began to look and feel increasingly medieval as they sprung to phantom life in black & white, and while I began to wonder if I would ever find the real Joan here, I WAS seeing the haunting face of the Middle Ages with its grandeur, mystery and terror mirrored in my twentieth century Arriflex viewfinder.
I knew then that to construct my portrait of Joan meant that I would have to see her in a glinting specular surface of a knife's edge, a thin bright dagger or sword gleaming in the surrounding darkness, and that in order to PICTURE Joan of Arc, I would need to image a model WORLD of Joan and so, although my set was still industrial in fact, I began to LIGHT it for the medieval space I saw in it.
But, while I felt the presence of Joan everywhere, I still only saw her with difficulty - sometimes she seemed shadowed by our world of fire, battles, and treacherously dark spaces.
So I imprisoned her. I had not intended to dwell on Joan in jail for too long, nor her trial, because I did not want to follow the path of Dreyer or Bresson; I wanted to show another Joan, a militant Joan, a Joan of action-as-character.
However, when I put Joan in prison, I received the gift I was looking for, and that was the gift of _Caroline Ruttle's_ talent and intensity as an actor.
In her eyes, in her face, in her movement - or often, the controlled lack of it - I found this mysterious fifteenth century woman that I had been tracking PERSONIFIED.
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With shots of Joan in her prison cell forming a visual core and with echoing voices narrating excerpts from her interrogation, the dark claustrophobic shots give way to visionary and hallucinatory images that trace Joan's career through dangerous journeys, from childhood visions and into sacred and profane spaces; battlegrounds, Churches, the prison where doubt and truth collide, and finally into the flames at the stake. For information about Exhibition and Screenings, please refer to our News Page
