Trial Transcripts And Close Ups

Dreyer worked from the surviving records of the 1431 trial and compressed months of interrogation into what plays as a single day. He had a full medieval fortress built in concrete and then largely refused to show it, shooting instead in close up on faces without makeup, lit flat and hard, often from below. Renee Jeanne Falconetti had come from light comedy on the Paris stage and never made another film. What she does here is not performance in the theatrical sense at all. The camera stays on her while judges lean in from the edges of frame, and the drama becomes a question of whether a person can be argued out of what they know. Dreyer cut the ground out from under the audience by refusing to establish the geography of the room, so the viewer is as disoriented as the accused.