Tag: The Passion of Joan of Arc

2012 Sight and Sound Poll Announced

“Vertigo” has now been named the #1 film over “Citizen Kane” in the 2012 Sight and Sound Critics’ Poll.

For 50 years, “Citizen Kane” has sat alone as the greatest film of all time, much like its title character locked away in a giant palace, untouched.

Now, a giant has toppled.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” has bested “Citizen Kane” as the number one film ever made in the Sight and Sound Poll, a list organized by Sight and Sound magazine and voted on by critics and writers from around the world.

Roger Ebert calls the list essentially the only film poll that matters, and it is such because it has been conducted every 10 years since 1952 and surveys the best of the best in film.

Citizen Kane has been number 1 since 1962 when it overcame Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” the reigning champ from 10 years prior. Since then, “Vertigo” has been on every list since 1972, climbing to as high as number 2 in 2002. This year, “Vertigo” received 191 votes from its 847 participants, dwarfing “Kane’s” 151.

This year’s full list is as follows.

  1. “Vertigo” – Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
  2. “Citizen Kane” – Orson Welles, 1941
  3. “Tokyo Story” – Yasujiro Ozu, 1953
  4. “The Rules of the Game” – Jean Renoir, 1939
  5. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” – F.W. Murnau, 1927
  6. “2001: A Space Odyssey” – Stanley Kubrick, 1968
  7. “The Searchers” – John Ford, 1956
  8. “Man With a Movie Camera” – Dziga Vertov, 1929
  9. “The Passion of Joan of Arc” – Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1927
  10. “8 1/2” – Federico Fellini, 1963 Continue reading “2012 Sight and Sound Poll Announced”

Debunking Silent Film Myths

Many silent films are considered old and dated despite a number of misconceptions and a lack of viewing options to watch all these classics.

The last and biggest hurdle to overcome to becoming a real lover of cinema is learning to appreciate silent films.

Stick enough violence or action in a movie and you can get anyone reading subtitles. Show them “Singin’ in the Rain” and they’ll be able to watch any musical ever made. Watch a movie timeless enough and you’ll forget that it’s in black and white.

But silent films are different. They’re a hard sell for a number of reasons, and there are a few myths and cultural problems to address before we notice a change.

Debunking silent film myths

Myth #1: Sound Movies are Better

The biggest misconception about film is that it was once seen as nothing more than a novelty, and only later did it become art.

Anyone who believes that transition happened between silents to talkies is wrong.

Of course sound and dialogue is a good thing. Movies would not be the same if we had been denied the clever dialogue of modern wordsmiths like the Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, Aaron Sorkin and more.

Rather, silent films hardly told stories the same way as talkies, even to the point that storytelling had to be reinvented with the introduction of sound.

But this form of silent storytelling was not primitive or inferior.

The best directors of the silent screen were gifted at telling a story through purely visual means, minimizing intertitles and composing moods through facial cues and striking shot placement.

Consider the chilling images of “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” the cinematic ballet of any of Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick, the mesmerizing first-ever montage of “The Battleship Potemkin” or the simple love story behind “Sunrise.”

I can’t think of more elegant, poetic or even easier ways of telling any of those stories, and I certainly can’t imagine how words would help. Continue reading “Debunking Silent Film Myths”

Rapid Response: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Theodore Dreyer’s groundbreaking silent film still feels daring and provocative today.

The history of “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is all there on the screen. To watch it is to see a film that looks unlike any silent film ever made, and to hear its back story is to realize that it is an anomaly of all cinema.

Carl Theodore Dreyer, a Danish director working in France, made a stripped down version of a famous French story, cast an actress (Maria Falconetti) that had never and would never make a movie again, and he defied spacial rules that had governed cinema for years and would continue to for decades after.

With that, “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is a series of shocking images without even musical accompaniment that was certainly ahead of its time and still bold and disturbing today. Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Passion of Joan of Arc”