“Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.” Carl Theodore Dreyer.

Maria Falconetti’s performance in Carl Theodore Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc is the most astonishing and astounding in all cinema. It is a performance whose intensity of expression has completely overwhelmed me, and utterly captivated me, and I am still, several days after seeing it, struggling to come to terms with it’s impact upon me as a film viewer, and as an actor. In short, I can’t get it out of my head.

Falconetti’s performance here is all the more remarkable because she is shot almost entirely in close-up, and expresses all that she needs to with her face only. And what a face it is: beautiful and symmetrical, instantly compelling, capable of startling animation. But it is her expressions which are consistently compelling and provocative throughout this silent film, where she spends most her time surrounded by inquisitors and jailers (in whom, Dreyer has assembled surely the finest group of vulture-faced potato-headed old gits in the history of cinema) who want Falconetti as Joan Of Arc to do something to discredit her belief that she is on a mission from God. Of course, her performance is essentially made up of her responses to the actions of her captives, and these responses are mostly drawn from the extreme end of human experience: bliss, terror, shock, incomprehension, depression, dismay (to name but a few), and all are delivered with a force and absolute truth, bringing about the revelation of Falconetti’s soul.

I wondered how Falconetti came to this performance, it was clear to me that it was not the result of a technical process because it lacks shape and precision of intent, but on the other hand, the consistent clarity of her expressions meant that her work could not have been the result of free form. It is true that her freedom of expression and her generosity in this role show that she must have been at ease on set, and would also indicate a good relationship with her director. However, I was surprised to learn the following from Roger Ebert’s review of the film : –

“for Falconnetti, the performance was an ordeal. Legends from the set tell of Dreyer forcing her to kneel painfully on stone and then wipe all expression from her face so that the viewer would read suppressed or inner pain. He filmed the same shots again and again, hoping that in the editing room he could find exactly the right nuance in her facial expression.”

This makes sense, and explains the precision of Falconetti’s performance in the absence of consummate technical control. However, I would suggest that Falconetti was more complicit in Dreyer’s method than this quote might infer, infact, I would say that Falconetti more than went along with it because she is enjoying her work, and enjoying it too much for it to be the result of mere directorial manipulation. Falconetti’s suffering on set, is her suffering to deliver the performance, which, in the eyes of the audience, becomes the illusion of the character, Joan Of Arc, suffering (which the audience pays it’s money to see). For the actor, there is no Joan Of Arc, she exists only as lines on a page in a script, and so, for the actor to give a truthful performance, he must go through a struggle congruent to that of the character. So Falconetti had to be complicit in Dreyer’s process, it was necessary in service of her work, her “ordeal” on set is congruent to Joan Of Arc’s, had it been anything less then we would not have been treated to the calibre of performance that we were. Ultimately, Falconetti’s performance is the result of innate acting talent, I don’t care what process you employ, it takes a special kind of actor to do what she did, and the range and intensity come from within the woman herself, they have to or else she couldn’t have done it, this stuff cannot be copied and it absolutely cannot be faked, and furthermore, acting is a mysterious and a largely intuitive business, and I’d offer Falconetti’s performance here as an example of the shamanistic dimension of acting, when the actor is apparently possessed by a spirit, and in the way Joan might have been (and they wont teach you how to do that at drama school).

I don’t know much about Falconetti, although I was amazed to learn that this was her only major film role, she preferred to work on stage as a light comedian (choosing the stage over the cinema was not unusual in those days, in the way it might be today). I urge all actors, directors, everybody to see this film, I believe Falconetti’s work to be at the very pinnacle, it’s certainly a very obvious example of great acting if you were unsure about what great acting might actually look like. No, it cannot be copied or faked, and few are blessed with an instrument such as Falconetti’s. Perhaps then, we can hold her work up as an example, a standard we may strive to meet, and something to measure our own work against, and perhaps one day we will be able to produce work that touches people in the way Falconetti’s performance of Joan has. That’s certainly something worth aiming for.