圣女贞德蒙难记

卡尔·西奥多·德莱叶执导于1928年的《圣女贞德受难记》，被誉为“电影史上探索人类灵魂的密度最大的一部影片”。英语中，Passion同时具有“激情”与“受难”两层含义，两者并非对立，而恰似一枚硬币的两面。爱与牺牲在德莱叶的影片中以一种异常粗粝又深藏着无限柔情的方式铭刻在火刑柱上，用痛苦的火焰温暖着世人。

圣女贞德的版本太多了，吕克·贝松的《圣女贞德的故事》采用了做作的神魔人三段论；雅克·里维特的《审判篇》与《监狱篇》则立足于萧伯纳的戏剧，略微疏离地表现人物；布列松的《审判贞德》则“要求我所挑选的女孩一刻也不要想她曾经或可以是贞德”。贞德对于法国人民来说象征着民族心、爱国情，对宗教来说象征着信、望、爱，对皇权来说象征着忠诚。她是纯洁的少女、善战的勇士、坚定的信徒、无悔的殉道者……任何一面都充满戏剧性，值得被拿来大作文章。然而德莱叶像是受到神启一样，在他之前不曾有人表现这样的贞德，在他之后也不敢有人再表现这样的贞德——一个疲惫的贞德。

贞德只有十九岁啊，可在德莱叶的镜头下，她像十天十夜没有合过眼的失眠者，像一天工作十八小时的纺织厂女工，像行将就木的老人，像中世纪的风化了的石雕，像千年的古树……她太累了，面对不停追问她的神父，面对爱戴她的人民，面对审判，面对死亡，乃至面对上帝，面对窗户投影在地上的十字。疲惫是尘世的枷锁，贞德赤身裸体行走在核辐射中，她终将死去，然而死亡还要过一会儿才到来，这延宕让她倍受熬煎。“快点来吧。”她想，“不，不要来。”最后连同内心的斗争一同捐弃了，在火焰中除了焦黑的碳还剩什么呢？教堂顶端栖息的鸽子四散飞去。
 
巴赞把此片比作“仿佛是由头像组成的奇妙壁画”，“是面部的纪录片”。整部影片几乎全由特写连接起来，贞德脸上的每一道细微的皱纹、每一个斑点、每一个毛孔都如此逼近观者，每一次呼吸都如同潮汐一般汹涌，这些面部的细微变化成为心灵的轨迹，通往神性的超验之路。
 
戈达尔《赖活》里的女主角，沦落为妓女的Nana，在电影院看《圣女贞德蒙难记》，眼泪滴落像黑暗中的花朵盛开。评说的人懂也不懂，流泪的人不懂也懂。

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970216/REVIEWS08/401010350/1023

Roger Ebert / February 16, 1997

You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti. In a medium without words, where the filmmakers believed that the camera captured the essence of characters through their faces, to see Falconetti in Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc'' (1928) is to look into eyes that will never leave you.

Falconetti (as she is always called) made only this single movie. "It may be the finest performance ever recorded on film,'' wrote Pauline Kael. She was an actress in Paris when she was seen on the stage of a little boulevard theater by Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968), the Dane who was one of the greatest early directors. It was a light comedy, he recalled, but there was something in her face that struck him: "There was a soul behind that facade.'' He did screen tests without makeup, and found what he sought, a woman who embodied simplicity, character and suffering.

Dreyer had been given a large budget and a screenplay by his French producers, but he threw out the screenplay and turned instead to the transcripts of Joan's trial. They told the story that has become a legend: of how a simple country maid from Orleans, dressed as a boy, led the French troops in their defeat of the British occupation forces. How she was captured by French loyal to the British and brought before a church court, where her belief that she had been inspired by heavenly visions led to charges of heresy. There were 29 cross-examinations, combined with torture, before Joan was burned at the stake in 1431. Dreyer combined them into one inquisition, in which the judges, their faces twisted with their fear of her courage, loomed over her with shouts and accusations.

If you go to the Danish Film Museum in Copenhagen you can see Dreyer's model for the extraordinary set he built for the film. He wanted it all in one piece (with movable walls for the cameras), and he began with towers at four corners, linked with concrete walls so thick they could support the actors and equipment. Inside the enclosure were chapels, houses and the ecclesiastical court, built according to a weird geometry that put windows and doors out of plumb with one another and created discordant visual harmonies (the film was made at the height of German Expressionism and the French avant-garde movement in art).

It is helpful to see the model in Copenhagen, because you will never see the whole set in the movie. There is not one single establishing shot in all of "The Passion of Joan of Arc,'' which is filmed entirely in closeups and medium shots, creating fearful intimacy between Joan and her tormentors. Nor are there easily read visual links between shots. In his brilliant shot-by-shot analysis of the film, David Bordwell of the University of Wisconsin concludes: "Of the film's over 1,500 cuts, fewer than 30 carry a figure or object over from one shot to another; and fewer than 15 constitute genuine matches on action.''
What does this mean to the viewer? There is a language of shooting and editing that we subconsciously expect at the movies. We assume that if two people are talking, the cuts will make it seem that they are looking at one another. We assume that if a judge is questioning a defendant, the camera placement and editing will make it clear where they stand in relation to one another. If we see three people in a room, we expect to be able to say how they are arranged and which is closest to the camera. Almost all such visual cues are missing from "The Passion of Joan of Arc.''

Instead Dreyer cuts the film into a series of startling images. The prison guards and the ecclesiastics on the court are seen in high contrast, often from a low angle, and although there are often sharp architectural angles behind them, we are not sure exactly what the scale is (are the windows and walls near or far?). Bordwell's book reproduces a shot of three priests, presumably lined up from front to back, but shot in such a way that their heads seem stacked on top of one another. All of the faces of the inquisitors are shot in bright light, without makeup, so that the crevices and flaws of the skin seem to reflect a diseased inner life.

Falconetti, by contrast, is shot in softer grays, rather than blacks and whites. Also without makeup, she seems solemn and consumed by inner conviction. Consider an exchange where a judge asks her whether St. Michael actually spoke to her. Her impassive face seems to suggest that whatever happened between Michael and herself was so far beyond the scope of the question that no answer is conceivable.

Why did Dreyer fragment his space, disorient the visual sense and shoot in closeup? I think he wanted to avoid the picturesque temptations of a historical drama. There is no scenery here, aside from walls and arches. Nothing was put in to look pretty. You do not leave discussing the costumes (although they are all authentic). The emphasis on the faces insists that these very people did what they did. Dreyer strips the church court of its ritual and righteousness and betrays its members as fleshy hypocrites in the pay of the British; their narrow eyes and mean mouths assault Joan's sanctity.

For Falconetti, 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. There is an echo in the famous methods of the French director Robert Bresson, who in his own 1962 "The Trial of Joan of Arc'' put actors through the same shots again and again, until all apparent emotion was stripped from their performances. In his book on Dreyer, Tom Milne quotes the director: "When a child suddenly sees an onrushing train in front of him, the expression on his face is spontaneous. By this I don't mean the feeling in it (which in this case is sudden fear), but the fact that the face is completely uninhibited.'' That is the impression he wanted from Falconetti.

That he got it is generally agreed. Perhaps it helps that Falconetti never made another movie (she died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1946). We do not have her face in other roles to compare with her face here, and the movie seems to exist outside time (the French director Jean Cocteau famously said it played like "an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn't exist'').

To modern audiences, raised on films where emotion is conveyed by dialogue and action more than by faces, a film like "The Passion of Joan of Arc'' is an unsettling experience--so intimate we fear we will discover more secrets than we desire. Our sympathy is engaged so powerfully with Joan that Dreyer's visual methods--his angles, his cutting, his closeups--don't play like stylistic choices, but like the fragments of Joan's experience. Exhausted, starving, cold, in constant fear, only 19 when she died, she lives in a nightmare where the faces of her tormentors rise up like spectral demons.

Perhaps the secret of Dreyer's success is that he asked himself, "What is this story really about?'' And after he answered that question he made a movie about absolutely nothing else.

An excellent essay by Matthew Dessem on "The Passion of Joan of Arc" here:
http://criterioncollection.blogspot.com/2006/11/62-passion-of-joan-of-arc.html
This is part of his undertaking to watch and write about every film in the Criterion Collection.

2015.10.16在里昂卢米埃尔电影节上看了最新修复版，管风琴配乐。片尾字幕时显示，本次修复使用是1981年在挪威奥斯陆发现的拷贝。回来一查，发现《圣女贞德蒙难记》的版本问题甚是复杂，现综合各种材料总结如下：

1.电影于1928年4月21日在哥本哈根的Paladsteatret首映（版本一），六个月后，即1928年10月25日在巴黎首映。德莱叶为此片拍摄了85000米的素材，最终剪辑用了2200米左右的素材。

2.1928年12月，柏林仓库起火，版本一底片被毁。德莱叶遂与制片人决定用剩余的素材重剪影片（版本二）。第二版和第一版只存在细微差别，用德莱叶的话来说，几乎只有他自己和制片人才能看出不同。不过很快，这个版本也毁于大火。

3.1936年，法国电影资料馆馆长亨利·朗格瓦发现了一部分损毁严重的残片。

4. 1952年法国电影作家Lo Duca声称他在巴黎找到了版本二的底片。在此基础上，50年代重新发行了《圣女贞德蒙难记》，并为该片配上了巴赫、维瓦尔第、斯卡拉蒂的音乐。德莱叶本人对这个版本非常不满，给Lo Duca写了一封措辞激烈的信，然并卵。

5. 1960年代，丹麦电影博物馆综合流传于世的各种不完美残片，拼凑推出过据说是最接近1928年版的版本。

6. 1981年，在一家奥斯陆的精神病院里，竟然不可思议地发现版本一的踪迹。

据考证，1928年4月，片方为了电影首映从巴黎寄了两个拷贝到哥本哈根。此次发现的拷贝即是其中之一，包装完好，上面写有清晰可见的日期、收件人、地址，盒内更附上了当时丹麦的审查意见书，应该是在哥本哈根的首映结束后，寄往挪威的。吊诡的是，这一拷贝是寄给一位名叫Harald Arnesen的内科大夫的。目前只知道他是一位历史爱好者，对法国革命史尤其感兴趣。但考虑到这部电影从未在挪威公映过，为何他有渠道得到拷贝，还是一个谜。

这一最新发现的版本和之前市面上流通的版本有些许不同，是目前被认为最完整最接近原版的，之后因为种种原因被删除的几个镜头也得到了保留，比如给贞德放血的特写、吮吸母亲乳头的孩子、火刑烟雾中贞德的侧影等。

 
2012年Eureka Entertainment修复发行的《圣女贞德蒙难记》dvd和蓝光，收录了2种帧速的“导演剪辑版”（20fps, 24fps）和Lo Duca版。应该是市面上能看到的最好的碟片版本了吧。