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Fresh and Exciting

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a classic tale of a true figure in French history, who paid a price for her beliefs. She is heroic as she fends off those that would have her take the easy way out. This film is hand painted and has brilliant color throughout. Also, the images are sophisticated. I have always thought that this story ranks with the best. Was Joan a hero or was she mad? Any way you look at it, she had the entire courage of her convictions.

There are basically 3 factors in here that show how he was so far above the other filmmakers back then. The first would be the color, which adds a completely new dimension to movies. The second would be the running time. Most films from around 1900 did not get close to the 2-minute-mark. Méliès crosses the 10-minute mark with this one. And the last would be the fact that he made films about actually historically significant people. Long before Maria Falconetti, there was Jeanne d'Alcy, who fittingly has a name almost like the character she portrays in here. I have to say I did not understand most of the action, so you may want to be familiar with who Jeanne D'Arc was and what she did before watching this. That way you may have a better experience. But even without understanding a lot, it was a good watch, because it was just so mesmerizing to look at with all the bright colors.

This is an elaborate production for its time, with 11 tableaux, 250 meters and a runtime of 10 minutes. Additionally, the print available on the Flicker Alley set is wonderfully hand-colored. There's also a nice vision scene-within-a-scene, which is a rather common, but appreciated, occurrence in early films. On the other hand, this early story film especially seems to be bogged down by Méliès's typical theatrical style, perhaps because it's a historical reenactment film rather than some amusing fantasy or fairytale. I don't find it as entertaining as his later films such as "Bluebeard" (1901), "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) and "The Kingdom of the Fairies" (1903), which more greatly overcome their stagy and primitive qualities. For instance, the revolving parade scene and the lame battle are goofed even for 1900. In addition, Méliès plays too many different roles in this one, which could have been confusing without the lecture provided.Nevertheless, it would take a couple years before other film pioneers, including Edwin S. Porter, Robert W. Paul and Ferdinand Zecca, to name a few, began to make narrative films to compare to this one. "Joan of Arc" came on the heels of Méliès's earlier and first super-production "Cinderella" (1899), which, like this film, connected its tableaux by dissolves. "Joan of Arc" is somewhat more polished than "Cinderella" was, as, likewise, Méliès's later féeries (fairy films) are more refined and sophisticated than this film.Also of note, Joan of Arc has always been a popular screen subject. The first filmed version I know of was by the Edison Company in 1895. The Lumiére Company made a shot-scene reenactment of the trial, titled "Execution of Joan of Arc" (Exécution de Jeanne d'Arc), just a year before Méliès's film. The Lumiére film, which has been available on home video, isn't worthwhile except for perhaps that it, too, survives in a hand-colored print. When I saw it, and when considering its title and that they only had a single shot-scene, I wondered why they wouldn't use the hand coloring to exploit the attraction of a burning at the stake. Méliès didn't miss opportunities like that.

Joan Of Arc (1900) *** 1/2 (out of 4) aka Jeanne d'Arc Breathtaking version of the classic story tells the life and death of the one and only Joan of Arc. This film is unique for many different reasons including the fact that it runs ten minutes long, which certainly wasn't common for the day. Another unique factor is that the entire film was hand colored and this is where the true beauty of the movie comes into play. The colors of the film are downright brilliantly done and makes other color films from this period look quite poor. The red colors of the dresses and the bright lime colors are beautiful to look at. The story is also told through narration and this is another plus as it's able to tell us a lot about what we're watching and it also points out the various roles being played by Melies. This film holds up incredibly well today and is one that would probably be enjoyed by plenty of kids who wouldn't normally watch a film from 1900.