Dreyer’s Jeanne d’Arc at the Cinéma d’Essai: Cinephiliac and Political Passions in 1950s Paris

Abstract

This chapter addresses Carl Th. Dreyer as a Pan-European filmmaker during the Cold War and in relation to the ways in which Scandinavian art cinema was canonized by Cahiers du cinéma and other French outlets of public discourse. It argues that Dreyer’s 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc) is a key contribution by a Nordic director to French film history and examines the importance of the 1952 French re-issue of the film and the contemporary critical reaction to it. The French film scholar Laurent Jullier has argued quite sharply that the standard version of the history of film style has been excessively influenced by Parisian cinephiles clustered around Cahiers du cinéma and certain other institutions. This chapter pays particular attention to the role of Cahiers’ co-founder and editor Lo Duca in the reception history of La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.