CT: Story Time!
We've had a first this week, readers. A fan request!
Based on my Movie Crush post this week about The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, one of our fantastic readers asked for a full post telling the story of the various versions of that film. And the finding it in the mental institution in Oslo. And in fairness, it's a pretty rad story.
So settle in readers. It's a 908 South story time!
The first thing you should understand is that the initial release of the movie was delayed quite a bit by the French Nationalists because they were pissed. As French Nationalists generally are. But specifically because Joan of Arc is a French hero and the director of the film is Carl Theodore Dreyer who is Dutch. "How could this Dutch dude ever really represent the real, actual France?!" they cried, smugly putting out their cigarettes on each other's berets. Plus Dreyer wasn't Catholic. Plus they'd heard a rumor that Lillian Gish was going to be cast as Joan (she wasn't) and ruin the whole thing (she probably wouldn't have).
So then the Archbishop of Paris and the French government both made cuts to the film that Dreyer didn't have any control over, a move that directors generally really love. It's their favorite when people mess with their art.
So then a fire at the studio in Berlin destroyed Dreyers original negative. Which meant that very very few copies of his cut of the film existed anywhere. Dreyer, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge defeat, cobbled together another version using the outtakes. The negative of which was also destroyed in a fire.
Then we can assume that Dreyer had a good cry.
They pretty much assumed that the original was gone for good by that time. A few other versions were put together. One that had narration and you know how CT loves a good voice over narration (spoiler: she doesn't. It's the absolute worst thing ever).
In 1951 a guy named Joseph-Marie Lo Duca found Dreyers cobbled together outtake version and decided the best thing he could do was make his own damn edits to it, again without asking Dreyer. Dreyer went on record as saying he objected to this version, which might be the nicer version of "Seriously dude, isn't life hard enough without turds like you ruining this damn movie even further?!?"
The crazy part of all of this doesn't even happen until the 1980s, when a janitor cleaning out a closet in a mental institution in Oslo found a whole bunch of canisters labeled as The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. He chose not to just throw them away, which is what 98% of people probably would have done. Instead he sent them over to The Norwegian Film Institute, where they sat around for THREE FREAKING YEARS before anyone bothered to look at them and realize they were the long lost original version of Carl Theodore Dreyer's original cinematic masterpiece.
And that's the story of this gorgeous film. I can't tell you how happy I am that they were in that closet and that we have this beauty instead of some stupid narrated version.
Happy watching!
CT
Based on my Movie Crush post this week about The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, one of our fantastic readers asked for a full post telling the story of the various versions of that film. And the finding it in the mental institution in Oslo. And in fairness, it's a pretty rad story.
So settle in readers. It's a 908 South story time!
The first thing you should understand is that the initial release of the movie was delayed quite a bit by the French Nationalists because they were pissed. As French Nationalists generally are. But specifically because Joan of Arc is a French hero and the director of the film is Carl Theodore Dreyer who is Dutch. "How could this Dutch dude ever really represent the real, actual France?!" they cried, smugly putting out their cigarettes on each other's berets. Plus Dreyer wasn't Catholic. Plus they'd heard a rumor that Lillian Gish was going to be cast as Joan (she wasn't) and ruin the whole thing (she probably wouldn't have).
So then the Archbishop of Paris and the French government both made cuts to the film that Dreyer didn't have any control over, a move that directors generally really love. It's their favorite when people mess with their art.
So then a fire at the studio in Berlin destroyed Dreyers original negative. Which meant that very very few copies of his cut of the film existed anywhere. Dreyer, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge defeat, cobbled together another version using the outtakes. The negative of which was also destroyed in a fire.
Then we can assume that Dreyer had a good cry.
They pretty much assumed that the original was gone for good by that time. A few other versions were put together. One that had narration and you know how CT loves a good voice over narration (spoiler: she doesn't. It's the absolute worst thing ever).
In 1951 a guy named Joseph-Marie Lo Duca found Dreyers cobbled together outtake version and decided the best thing he could do was make his own damn edits to it, again without asking Dreyer. Dreyer went on record as saying he objected to this version, which might be the nicer version of "Seriously dude, isn't life hard enough without turds like you ruining this damn movie even further?!?"
The crazy part of all of this doesn't even happen until the 1980s, when a janitor cleaning out a closet in a mental institution in Oslo found a whole bunch of canisters labeled as The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. He chose not to just throw them away, which is what 98% of people probably would have done. Instead he sent them over to The Norwegian Film Institute, where they sat around for THREE FREAKING YEARS before anyone bothered to look at them and realize they were the long lost original version of Carl Theodore Dreyer's original cinematic masterpiece.
And that's the story of this gorgeous film. I can't tell you how happy I am that they were in that closet and that we have this beauty instead of some stupid narrated version.
Happy watching!
CT
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