Overturning the heresy: Joan of Arc at the Stake

“It’s beautiful to be the daughter of God.”
– Joan of Arc, in Joan of Arc at the Stake

Picking up where Victor Fleming’s final film, the independently produced Joan of Arc (1948), leaves off, Roberto Rossellini’s Giovanna d’Arco al rogo (Joan of Arc at the Stake, 1954) begins just as Joan of Arc has been burned to death as a heretic. While both films star Ingrid Bergman as the titular 19-year-old patron saint of France, the former is the dramatic telling of her life and the trial which led to her death, and the latter is a poetic imagining of her post-mortem reflections on her life’s purpose.

Adapted from Paul Claudel’s 1938 oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher with music by Arthur Honegger, Rossellini’s film stands out in his filmography, particularly from the vantage of 1954 where his foray into television – which would begin only a few years later – was still unthinkable. Shot in vivid Gevacolor,¹ Joan of Arc at the Stake is the first feature length colour work by Rossellini. Furthermore, its theatrical qualities, enhanced by cinematic techniques which go back to the silent era, set it apart from his earlier neorealist work, earning it a somewhat heretical position within his oeuvre.

However, when placed alongside the execution of the priest at the end of Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City, 1945), who prayerfully says, “God, forgive them,” after taking a volley of bullets to the back; or the vignette structure of Paisà (Paisan, 1946) and Francesco, giullare di Dio (The Flowers of St. Francis, 1950), how Rossellini arrived at a work like Joan of Arc at the Stake becomes apparent. Further, its flourishes elucidate the nature of an artist engaging with the prospect of change.

The film opens in darkness, with a space that is formless and void. From out of the darkness, stars fade in, followed by a celestial mist. Like the Rococo figures in paintings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the saints and Heavenly hosts descend into frame, their wings and nimbuses casting the occasional glint of light as they encircle Joan in purgatory. Prefiguring the infinite black space of the stage in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le gai savoir (Joy of Learning,1969) while also calling to mind the early films shot in Thomas Edison’s studio Black Maria, the darkness of purgatory is occasionally interrupted by visions from the past, present, and future. 

Coming out from the darkness, Saint Dominic joins Joan and reminds her of the charges levied against her by the church officials who, he says, “turned their backs against the will of God.” Revisiting her heresy trial, Joan is permitted this time to see the English-sympathising church officials for who they really were: animals. Adorned with the heads of pigs and sheep while respectively speaking to the quality of their character, it is clear that the trial was always against her. Later on, to her delight, she is also given a glimpse of a France which is thriving following her death. To accomplish presenting some of these vistas, Rossellini employed a variation of the Schüfftan process,² using glass and mirrors to reflect paintings of structures and landscapes into the frame. 

Despite this, film critic and soon to be filmmaker Jacques Rivette wrote only a year after the film’s release in Cahiers du cinéma that “Rossellini’s films have more and more obviously become amateur films; home movies; Joan of Arc at the Stake is not a cinematic transposition of the celebrated oratorio, but simply a souvenir film of his wife’s performance in it.”³ For Bergman, who married Rossellini following the high profile discovery of their affair during the production of Stromboli (1950), Joan of Arc at the Stake was her third opportunity to portray Joan,⁴ and it is, in a way, a reconciling of her negative treatment in the press and in the film industry. While their relationship led to her exile from Hollywood, she still looked back on that time, saying, “I never stopped thinking that if he had not done those movies with me, for me, his success would have continued gloriously. Our love, my love, broke that success.”⁵

Still, when given the chance to speak on the work himself, Rossellini acknowledged in a 1954 interview conducted by François Truffaut that he had been “baptized” by the critics and the public as the “inventor of neorealism.” Offering that the meaning of neorealism had been misunderstood, he then goes on to define what neorealism means for him, summing it up in four words: “love of one’s neighbor.”⁶ Calling to mind the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:39, which places the second greatest commandment as being “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Rossellini posits that morality is central to neorealism rather than economics and bombed out buildings.

“There’s no greater love than to give one’s life for those one loves,” sings the heavenly host at the film’s conclusion, alluding to Jesus’ words in John 15:3. Throughout Joan of Arc at the Stake, Joan speaks of love as her guiding light. When asked by Saint Dominic about the sword given to her by Saint Michael the Archangel, she says, “Its name isn’t hate, its name is love.” In Ephesians 6:17, the Word of God is described as “the sword of the Spirit,” and that truth remains on Joan’s mind and heart as she is given a final chance to recant while chained to the stake.

This is a truth she had learned as a child from nature, and she communicates the essence of Romans 1:20 by saying, “It was the lime tree in front of my father’s house, like a tall preacher in white surplice in the moonlight, which revealed everything to me.” Her acceptance of that truth is then “tested by fire.”⁷ Raising her arms to the heavens, she triumphantly declares, “To burn a candle and illuminate the Lady. It will be me who will be burned as a gracious candle.”

At the moment of her death, Joan throws off her chains, raises her arms and ascends, declaring, “I’m loose! I’ve broken free!” Soon, Rossellini would be a filmmaker no longer bound by the expectations of neorealism. His history films and television miniseries in the 1960s and ’70s would go on to redefine how he was perceived as a filmmaker, but it was Joan of Arc at the Stake which was the “gracious candle” illuminating Rossellini’s steps.

Giovanna d’Arco al rogo/Joan of Arc at the Stake (1954 Italy 80 mins)

Prod: Giorgio Criscuolo, Franco Francese Dir, Scr: Roberto Rossellini Phot: Gábor Pogány Ed: Jolanda Benvenuti Mus: Arthur Honegger Art Dir: Carlo Maria Cristini Cos Des: Adriana Muojo

Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Tullio Carminati, Giacinto Prandelli, Augusto Romani, Plinio Clabassi, Saturno Meletti, Agnese Dubbini, Pietro de Palma, Aldo Tenossi

Endnotes