ABSTRACT
In its brief century of existence, the cinema has produced more versions of the life of Joan of Arc than almost any other single story.1 From the first Joan of Arc of 1895, produced by Edison, to Luc Besson's The Messenger of 1999, more than twenty fiction films and countless educational or quasi-documentary films about the heroine have been made, with several new film projects currently underway.2 In addition to the impressive output, several of the cinema's most highly respected directors have made films about Joan of Arc. Carl Theodor Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc of 1928 and Robert Bresson's Le Proces de Jeanne d'Arc of 1961 have had an incalculable influence on the cinema due to their stylistic rigor and thematic complexity. In addition, although it is one of his lesser-known works, Roberto Rossellini made a Joan of Arc film in 1954, based on the oratorio by Paul Claudel called Jeanne au bucher. Regardless of their status in the history of the medium, all films about Joan of Arc play a crucial role in understanding the heroine's presence in the media-dominated twentieth century. The plethora of films charts a compelling record of changing cultural attitudes toward women, war, nationalism, the Roman Catholic Church, and countless other issues brought up by the anomalous woman warrior. While an essay of this length cannot begin to analyse the myriad roles filled by Joan of Arc in twentieth-century culture, it can introduce the films and suggest the most fruitful areas for further investigation.
