|
Television
The elusive Joan of Arc
By RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
Part of the enduring attraction of the character we know as Joan
of Arc is that, in spite of the published evidence from her trial and execution
as a heretic in 1431, and the volumes of testimony from hundreds of witnesses
at the reinvestigation 20 years later, she remains an elusive figure.
Illiterate, she could never write her own story -- she could
barely write her name. None of the likenesses of her in painting or sculpture
were done by artists who had seen her in the flesh.
So, like the artists, novelists, musicians, playwrights, and film
directors -- like Shakespeare, (Henry VI, Pt. I), George Bernard Shaw, Mark
Twain, Francois Villon, Jean Anouilh, Verdi, Maxwell Anderson, Victor Fleming
and actress Ingrid Bergman -- and like the 15th century peasants, soldiers and
nobles who remade her image according to their own hopes, ambitions, voices and
visions -- we are free to fill in what is lacking in the historical portrait
and to find in her what we want.
And so is CBS.
CBS has decided to take up her cause for their epic
offering in the ratings race in the May spring sweeps period. Rival NBC offers
Noahs Ark, where Noah, responding to Gods voice, saves
his family from Sodom and Gomorrah -- and the Flood. ABC puts its money on a
remake of Cleopatra. The New York Daily News reminds us that
Cleopatras first promo ran on 20/20, when Barbara
Walters interviewed Monica Lewinsky. Cleopatra is to be a show
about a young woman whose sexual allure snared a world leader.
We can imagine the first story conferences that got Joan of
Arc -- a four-hour miniseries to be broadcast May 16 and 18 -- underway.
They certainly had a great story.
The time is the early 15th century, the Hundred Years War,
during which France, in political and economic chaos, struggled with England
for full control of French territory. On the map, the British controlled the
North; their allies, the Burgundians, had Flanders and territory east of the
Loire River; and the French loyal to the House of Valois, held south of the
Loire. The weak-kneed, uncrowned Valois king, Charles VII, the dauphin, cowered
in his castle at Chinon.
In February 1429, a 16-year-old farm girl presented herself in
mens clothes at his court to tell Charles that her voices --
Ss. Margaret and Catherine and the Archangel Michael, who had been speaking to
her for three years -- had sent her to place him on the throne of France. He
had her examined by theologians and, for a variety of reasons, chose to believe
her -- or, rather, to use her for his purposes.
Charles VII was a corrupt, dishonest, manipulative man. Moreover,
the idea that God worries about the map of Europe and decided in 1429 to back
the French (who were no more Catholic than the English) is hard for the
contemporary, or any, mind to accept.
Nevertheless, dressed in full armor, equipped with a
Crusaders sword she found in a church, joined by her brothers Jean and
Peter and 3 to 4 thousand men, and carrying a white banner designed for her,
Joan set out in April to rescue the city of Orleans.
Though she had no military training, she nevertheless insisted
that her voices told her when and where to attack. Her commanders
had to jockey between ignoring her advice and following her as an inspirational
figure. In the battle for Orleans she took an English arrow in her shoulder,
had it pulled out, remounted her horse, and galloped back into the fight.
Victories piled up, and on July 17, Charles was crowned at Reims.
Mission accomplished, Joan could have returned to her farm; but, perhaps not
confident that her new king had the gumption to continue the fight, she goaded
him into attacking Paris -- where Joan was wounded again and the campaign
failed. Charles desire to rule every foot of France was not as strong as
Joans; he made truces with the hated Burgundians and failed to press the
war against the British. Joans fortunes slipped, her voices fell
silent.
Meanwhile the two forces that hated her -- the British, for
obvious reasons, and the church, who could tolerate no spiritual authority
other than its own -- conspired. In May 1430 the British captured her at
Compiegne and handed her over to the church for trial as a heretic.
For four months, February to May, she stood before the court. Her
judges were Pierre Cauchon, the count-bishop of Beauvais, and Jean
LeMaitre, vice inquisitor of France. Cauchon hated Joan bitterly;
LeMaitre was uncomfortable with the whole procedure and absented himself
often. The goals: humiliate Charles VII by proving he had listened to a heretic
and witch, and get this troublesome woman who had rekindled French nationalism
out of the way.
Thats the raw material. But what have the TV scriptwriters
done with it? What led the corporate bosses to believe that this story might
attract a big Sunday night audience? Sanctity? Chastity? Religion?
Maybe the success of Academy Award nominee Elizabeth,
with its burning heretics and murderous priests, egged them on. More likely the
popular TV program Xena, the Princess Warrior, a female Hercules
who can beat, kick and slash the heck out of a forest full of males, was at
least part of their inspiration.
The Daily News describes it as a coming of age tale
as seen through the eyes of a teenage Joan, and executive producer Ed
Gerson calls it an inspirational story of self-sacrifice. It should make
us think about who we are in the world and whether were able to make a
difference.
Well, maybe. My thoughts did turn to Kosovo as I watched. The
scenes of the refugees for whom Joan shows compassion could have come from last
nights TV news. On the other hand, this mornings paper announced
that some of the new Apache helicopters, those low-flying superweapons whose
firepower will make mincemeat out of the Serb troops, will have women pilots.
Its never been clear to me that giving women all the opportunities to
kill that used to be exclusively male has improved the status of women.
Above all, this production comes across as the story not so much
of a Catholic saint as of a tough, strong-willed, independent woman who listens
to no one but herself and defies the religious authoritarians who destroy
her.
Like the 1948 Victor Fleming film version, which starred Ingrid
Bergman as Joan and Jose Ferrer as the dauphin, the producers have assembled a
strong cast -- including Maximilian Schell as LeMaitre, Jacqueline Bisset
as Joans mother, and Shirley MacLaine as Madame de Beaurevoir, a
Burgundian noblewoman who tries to win Joan to their side. I wish I could say
that Leelee Sobieski -- who at 16, Joans age when she started, is just
beginning her film career -- is a powerful screen presence. But what we gain
with her in authenticity, we sometimes lose in dramatic force.
Peter OToole, on the other hand, as Cauchon, with his red
robes and leathery face and a voice that roars and whispers, commands every
scene in which he appears. His Cauchon is the worst kind of
spiritual authority, the cynic. Joans voices are not from
God, he says, but he allows the people to believe in them because they are
useful for the faith. He is profoundly evil, yet ambiguous --
single-minded in destroying any threat to his power, yet, we sense, intelligent
enough to sense that he might be wrong.
The production strives for epic scale without the budget that big
studio productions once allowed. They shot the film last fall in the beautiful
castles and countryside around Prague. For crowd scenes, special effects
transform a mere 200 extras in a cathedral or battle into thousands.
Repetitious slow-motion charges, cameras focused on galloping horses
hoofs and blurred battle close-ups become signals that the filmmakers are
saving money, and we long for the simple realistic drama of a face-to-face
encounter.
We also wonder about some liberties with the historical record. We
know that Joans parents sheltered her during adolescence; her father was
once frightened by a dream that she would run away with soldiers and become a
camp follower. But theres little evidence that the father was the
bigoted, heartless brute portrayed here or that her brother, Peter, died in the
failed battle for Paris, causing the father to resent Joan all the more.
The trial is a great encounter as Joan matches her quiet courage
and peasant wit against Cauchon. When the questioners get nowhere they threaten
her with torture but see it would be useless. Suffering from her imprisonment,
a confused Joan at one stage agrees to recant; but, for motives historians have
not figured out, she redons her male clothing -- interpreted as a sign of
defiance -- and is taken to the stake.
Historians tell us how much Joan cherished her virginity and that
it remained intact in spite of a marriage offer and rough treatment in prison.
Although there is no evidence supporting it in the several sources I consulted,
the CBS script indicates that the inquisitor, LeMaitre, planted the male
clothing in her cell and that, at the priests command, Joan of Arc was
raped.
Not satisfied with a heroine who loved the church even as its
ministers oppressed her, who won battles and gave hope to a whole nation, who
slept in the fields beside hundreds of men, who cherished her virginity as she
did, the CBS scriptwriters -- eyes on the audience -- felt they had to make her
a rape victim as well.
What Joan of Arc protected all her life she has lost on American
TV.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is assistant dean of Fordham
College.
National Catholic Reporter, May 14,
1999
|
|