Cinema is the art of movement, theatre the art of words

Rating: 7/10 (16 November 2005)

It's a fact that, out of necessity, because he had no way of putting sound in the movie, at the time Carl Dreyer achieved a masterpiece, or better saying "a tour de force".
This is perhaps the most talkative of the silent films. The plot is "Le Procés de Jeanne d'Arc" . It is a trial, and a trial is a battle of words.
Trying to convey the force of words with images and expressions on the actor's faces is about the same as a deaf person going to see "King Lear".
To paraphrase the Bard "It is a serious tale full of fury and no sound and signifying many things".
One of those things is that the British were perfidious before Elisabeth I, and that goes on till tomorrow, to be kind...