Jeanne Marie Renée

Martin Arnold

2003

Video
Materials:

Collection: De Vleeshal Collection, Middelburg (The Netherlands) (Inv. no. VH0292).

Here Martin Arnold reinterprets the silent-film classic The Passion of Joan of Arc directed by Carl Thomas Dreyer in 1928, with Maria Falconetti in the leading role. He focuses on Joan during her trial, where in the original film images of the defendant are interspersed with images of her prosecutor. Arnold manipulates various scenes. He deletes images of the prosecutor and directs attention fully towards the actress’s facial expressions. In this way he retains a collection of some fifteen different close-ups of Joan of Arc, drawing on this well of successive emotions for an hour-long’s presentation.

The projection is programmed so that that the close-ups follow each other one-by-one in an almost random order – ‘almost’ random, because the scenes where she is crying are intended for the end of the day (in the M HKA the programming was set for one day, but at the exhibition in De Vleeshal, for instance, it ran over six weeks and the crying scenes were reserved for the final week). Between each scene is a point of rest: the facial expressions of the actress are transformed into a neutral mien by means of a ‘morphing’-technique, and whereby (again via morphing) she again changes to the following emotionally charged expression. This gives rise to a near-seamless procession of emotions: hope, astonishment, ecstasy, resignation, etc., succeed one another in endless repetition. The slow tempo serves to enhance the estranging effect. By digitally manipulating old Hollywood films, Arnold creates an image with a very charged atmosphere. It seems like a single long, drawn out close-up of a woman full of contained tension, imprisoned in the image frame.

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