Joan the Woman

Cecil B. DeMille vying with Griffith for the epic view, not a ballad but a full opera. Lights dim around "the sturdy country maiden" (Geraldine Farrar) for a halo effect, she spreads her arms to fit the crucifix of an oversized fleur de lis in an image reworked by Dalí (Corpus Hypercubus). The mission's divine spark comes to her in the barn where she tends to a wounded Burgundian captain (Wallace Reid), their romance is not to be but their paths cross again and again. A firebrand in a defeatist land, a shot in the arm of Charles VII (Raymond Hatton), a screen streaked by lances and swords held aloft. "Joan of Arc, I'll follow thee to Victory—or to Hell!" Superimpositions embody the heroine's visions, English invaders marching over court revelers become The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for Ingram and Minnelli. Storming of Orleans by "the petticoat general," Uccello perspectives of soldiers and horses colliding en masse. Poisoned wine courtesy of Bishop Cauchon (Theodore Roberts), who presides over the trial so vengefully that even his sidekick "the Mad Monk" (Tully Marshall) begs the would-be witch's forgiveness. A glowing oval in the darkened screen turns out to be a molten cauldron as the iris opens to reveal the torture chamber, Joan's flash of terror is exacerbated by apparitions of hooded tormentors in her cell, the celluloid tinted orange provides the flaming culmination. (A quiet note before the furioso spectacle finds a little cart delivering wicker for the stake early in the morning.) The upshot is that it's a wartime booster for Anglo-French relations, the armored phantom materializes to bless a suicide mission in the trenches. "The time has come for thee to expiate thy sin against me." In black and white.