Very "Hot Stuff" in the France of 1928

Rating: 8/10 (5 April 2010)

My theory on why we almost lost this one (most of the prints were destroyed in the '30s):
The Great War all but destroyed what was left of a French Enlightenment and democratic tradition that was little more than 150 years old. The culture that had spawned Descartes, Focault, Rousseau and Napoleon was in decline well =before= the huns charged across Flanders in 1914, but it was in a moral, spiritual and financial power-dive and headed down the road into a civil war between the urban socialists and communists vs. the urban and rural landholding, wealthy, ultra-conservative fascists in 1928.
The Holy Roman Church retained its power in the provinces, but as urbanization spread, France was splitting into a polarized culture of progressive, anti-clerical urbanites who watched films and listened to the radio and traditionalistic – and politically conservative -- peasants. The great landowners of the northeast had been all but ruined by the Great War, and it would be some time before they held the political power they'd had until 1914.
French politics involved endless battles between labor unions and manufacturers in the cities. Fascism was on the rise, but it was a listless, reactive, passionless sort, as opposed to all the excitement in Italy and Germany at the time. The modern viewer may do well to understand this as he or she watches "The Passion" For this is a film of metaphors.
The Paris intellectuals of the '20s saw Benedict 15th, and Pius 10th, 11th and 12th during the early part of the 20th century as the popes and anti-popes of Joan's day.
Joan of Arc had "led" the pro-papist ("conservative") French forces that installed pro-papist king Charles 7th to the throne during the Hundred Years War against the English in the early 15th century. She may have been canonized for her role in "saving France for Holy Roman Church," but she is also seen by many in France as the savior of the culture in the face of a very serious foreign threat.
Some saw French politics in the '20s and '30s as strikingly parallel to the politics of Joan's time. A prisoner of his very divided College of Cardinals (many from the Central Powers), Pius 10th stood on the sidelines as Germany and Austria-Hungary set about dismantling the rest of the Continent.
The urban French audiences of 1928, and indeed, the audiences in much of Northern Europe understood the "message" here, depending upon their point of view: Kill the threatening energy of French democracy and give us another "man on a horse" (and good churchman), in this case a war hero named Philippe Petain... the very same Marshal Petain who would head the puppet Vichy government for the Nazis just a dozen years later.