Joan the Maid I: The Battles

A peasant girl of seventeen goes to a garrison and asks to speak to the commander. She says she must see the king. Nobody takes her seriously. She insists and in the end puts on men's clothes and sets out. The king receives her. She is sent to the siege of Orléans. Then the fighting begins and she takes a place inside the army. Jacques Rivette directs. Sandrine Bonnaire plays Joan. The film was made in two parts; this first one covers the battles and the second the trial. Rivette's choice is not to show the miracle. No voices are heard, there is no light, no supernatural moment is shown; Joan only says what she heard, and the film does not intervene. The narrative rests on daily detail: how armour is put on, how a horse is handled, how an army is fed and who says what to whom. Sandrine Bonnaire does not play the part as a hero; the girl is stubborn, coarse and often tired. The battles are small in scale and realistic; instead of massed armies there are a few people in tight spaces. It is long and the pace is deliberately slow; Rivette wants to describe a process, not an event. Who it is for: viewers who like French art cinema and historical narrative. Who it is not for: it is very long, without event, and the film is somewhere else than a viewer expecting an epic would want.