Really? I had no idea. I'd just figured she was a big star lost by time. Wow.
I can't remember which exactly it is, but making "...Joan of Arc" was such a traumatic experience for Falconetti that she either gave up acting or had a nervous breakdown (and subsequently HAD to give up acting).
Has anyone seen the silent The Passion of Joan of Arc?
raises hand
Very powerful drama that puts the viewer through the wringer. The movie starts with Joan's trial and continues through her execution. Maria Falconetti is a miracle as Joan -- you can feel her anguish, and the camera spends a lot of time in close-up. Actually, much of the film is close-ups of the characters -- something that adds to the power.
Dreyer famously put Falconetti through the wringer for her performance. It's her only movie, but one of the great film performances. Antonin Artaud himself plays one of her accusers. The original cut was thought lost for many years, and film historians had to make do with a version cobbled together from alternate takes for years. Finally they found a complete print of the original cut about ten years ago (or so).
Finally they found a complete print of the original cut about ten years ago (or so).
...in a janitor's closet in a Norwegian mental hospital.
Not the first place you'd expect to find such a thing.
...in a janitor's closet in a Norwegian mental hospital.
Not the first place you'd expect to find such a thing.
Well, you know, it's always in the last place you look, and a janitor's closet in a Norwegian mental hospital is exactly the last place I would look for, well, anything except maybe a Norwegian mop, so I guess it makes some kind of sense.
Great, harrowing film with amazing use of forced perspective and quease-inducing not-quite-right angles and off-balance walls and ceilings that feel like they're about to slide off each other and crush everyone beneath them. And Falconetti is astonishing, but from all the accounts of the experience of filming it it's no wonder at all that she never did another film.
See, if Giles or Wes had just thought to look more often in a janitor's closet in a Norwegian mental hospital...woulda saved a whole lotta hassle at times.
"Oh look, a spare copy of the Books of Ascension"
I'm not sure that would be necessary, as whatever they were looking for was always in some Sunnydale crypt or forgotten amongst Giles' Velvet Underground records.
Zap2it interview with Paul Bettany.
Milla Jovovich is going to be in a movie called Ultraviolet which they say isn't anything like the tv series even though it involves a disease that turns people into "vampire-like" creatures.
Okay.
Silly sumi, it will be a expose about the Hollywood beauty ideal.
What, you don't think there's an interesting correlation between unnaturally tan people and scariness?
Has anyone seen the silent The Passion of Joan of Arc?
A few weeks ago I watched My Life to Live which shows a scene from this (and I thought just that one scene looked like a masterpiece) and then I happened to catch the whole thing on TCM last Sunday. Amazing.