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Joan the Maid - The Battles / The Prisons

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DVD details

Actor: Jean-Pierre Becker, Mathieu Bisson, Pierre Baillot, Sandrine Bonnaire, Stéphane Boucher
Brand: Facets Multimedia
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 228 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-05-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: FACETS

DVD Reviews of Joan the Maid - The Battles / The Prisons

DVD Review: Meet the historical Jehanne
Summary: 5 Stars

Seeing myself as a kind of Randian "romantic realist" as far as movies are concerned, I was initially reluctant to purchase a copy of Rivette's rather naturalistic "Joan the Maid", all the more so as I would not rank Sandrine Bonnaire among the prettier French actresses I know of, and I was a bit afraid of the director's potentially anti-Catholic approach, given his track record. However, watching the movie right after reading Regine Pernoud's well-documented 1986 biography of Jeanne, which served as one of the sources for the scenario, I was impressed by the writers and the director's concern with historical accuracy, within the limits, of course, of a minuscule budget rendering a realistic recreation of the battles impossible (do not expect to see more than a few dozen men at once on screen, if that.) The only blatant error I did notice based on my very meager but relatively fresh knowledge of Jeanne's life was that Rivette has her wear her battle armour during the coronation scene, while Pernoud suggests she was wearing rich women's clothes, about which the then archbishop of Chartres even said she had been a little vain (I missed the opportunity for characterization more than the dress, though.)

Bonnaire is perfect as Jeanne, wonderfully capturing her endearing sense of humour and her paradoxically no-nonsense approach to life, whether on Earth or in Heaven. Her self-effacing impersonation of the Maid (she is an actress, not a celebrity) makes her beautiful even if she is not. She actually feels like the person that transpires through the first-hand documents, unlike Besson's psychotic, comic-book top-model, or Lelee Sobieski's moody American teenager. Moreover, her surroundings actually look like France (because they are), unlike the Disneyland of the Duguay movie.

My only reservations are with the DVD edition of this film. First, it appears that we are not presented with a full-length version : "The Battles", which should be 160', is only 112' long, while "The Prisons" is 116' instead of 176, which means a total of 108 minutes are missing, the length of an ordinary movie (I know that more is not necessarily better, but given the rather undramatic construction of the film, it might well be in the present case.) Second, the edition is not enhanced for 16/9 screens, so that I actually had to reduce the size of the image to make it look less grainy. Third, the subtitles cannot be removed (which is frustrating if you understand French) and are not always reliable (I did not read them systematically, but I found quite a few egregious errors.) And finally, the supplements are virtually non-existent and the chronology of Jeanne's life contains a few errors of spelling ("Domrémy", her village, becomes a more musical "Dorémy" for instance.)

I would not recommend this movie to anybody with a teenage mentality, measuring the greatness of a movie in terms of the hormonal discharges it produces. I am afraid Joan the Maid is not the kind of stimulus that activates viewers' endocrine systems. People under thirty-five should therefore abstain. But if you really want to get a sense of the historical Jeanne, or Jehanne as she spelled it, and can survive 90 minutes without any battle in a movie called "The Battles", then this film is for you. Jeanne does not run on walls, make any fancy moves with her sword or even kill anyone (like the real Jeanne), but at least she lives.

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JOAN THE MAID:THE BATTLES/THE PRISONS - DVD Movie

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