Double Feature: LANCELOT DU LAC (LANCELOT OF THE LAKE), 1974, 50th Anniversary! THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC (PROCÈS DE JEANNE D'ARC), 1962 May 20, 2012

Sunday, May 20 – 7:30 PM
Double Feature: LANCELOT DU LAC (LANCELOT OF THE LAKE), 1974, Gaumont, 85 min. Bresson’s dream project, a film he wanted to make for more than 20 years, LANCELOT DU LAC marked a new distillation in the master’s vision and style. The director predictably ignores the pageantry, magic and romance of the quest for the Holy Grail, concentrating instead on the demise of the chivalric codes and on the canonic knights’ spiritual anguish as they return “without the Grail, which is to say the absolute, God” (Bresson.) The famous jousting sequence is “one of the most exciting action sequences in the history of cinema” (Jonathan Rosenbaum). In French with English subtitles. [35mm] Trailer
50th Anniversary! THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC (PROCÈS DE JEANNE D'ARC), 1962, Janus Films, 65 min. Bresson’s sparest and most inexorable film is taken entirely from the official transcripts of the trial of Joan of Arc - whom the director called “the most extraordinary person who ever lived” - and concentrates on her torment and humiliation. Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC looks almost melodramatic next to TRIAL’s spartan gravity; the parched quality of Bresson’s rendering is indicated in its relative absence of water or fluids. “For the first time in film history, one feels that Joan was really burned.” - Richard Roud. In French with English subtitles. [35mm]
Trailer

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