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Saint Joan
Catalog Number
35695
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Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
Catalog Number
35695
Primary Distributor (If not listed, select "OTHER")
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N/A (NTSC)
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Saint Joan (1957)
Additional Information
Additional Information
For the first time on screen Otto Preminger presents Bernard Shaw's....
After an extensive talent search, producer-director Otto Preminger selected a 17-year-old unknown from Iowa, Jean Seberg, to play Joan of Arc, a role traditionally portrayed by actresses twice to three times Seberg's age. Seberg is cast opposite such venerable pros as Richard Todd (as Dunois), Anton Walbrook (the Bishop of Beauvais), John Gielgud (Earl of Warwick) and Felix Aylmer (The Inquisitor). Cast as the vacillating Dauphin is Richard Widmark. Graham Greene's screenplay refashions the original Shaw text in the form of a flashback. Seberg eventually became an accomplished actress by virtue of her appearances in such nouvelle vague films as Breathless, but it was too late to salvage Saint Joan, which was figuratively burned at the stake by critics and filmgoers alike.
Saint Joan is a 1957 British-American film adapted from the George Bernard Shaw play of the same title about the life of Joan of Arc. The restructured screenplay by Graham Greene, directed by Otto Preminger, begins with the play's last scene, which then becomes the springboard for a long flashback, from which the main story is told. At the end of the flashback, the film then returns to the play's final scene, which then continues through to the end.
This was the film debut of actress Jean Seberg, who won a talent search conducted by Preminger that reportedly tested more than 18,000 young women for the role.
"some odd omissions, interpolations and additions" and that "the result is a certain scrappiness and confusion in the first half of the film in place of Shaw's slow and careful build-up."
Other reviewers complained that an epilogue Shaw wrote was used as a prologue and recurring scene throughout the film. The released film lacks any foreword or historical introduction. Greene, a convert to Catholicism, was also criticized for changing Shaw's view that the entire church was responsible for Joan's execution. The film places the blame on individual judges. The film does not mention that Joan was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1909 and canonized in 1920, unlike Shaw's play, where a "Gentleman" appears in the last scene and announces that Joan has been canonized "in Basilica Vaticana, the sixteenth day of May, nineteen hundred and twenty."[1]) However, in both play and film, Joan's last line is "O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?"
Upon release of the film, Jean Seberg's performance as Joan was soundly panned, and Preminger was heavily criticized for casting an inexperienced unknown in a role which required her to act with veteran actors such as John Gielgud, Anton Walbrook, Felix Aylmer, and others.
Release Date: June 26, 1957
Distrib: United Artists
After an extensive talent search, producer-director Otto Preminger selected a 17-year-old unknown from Iowa, Jean Seberg, to play Joan of Arc, a role traditionally portrayed by actresses twice to three times Seberg's age. Seberg is cast opposite such venerable pros as Richard Todd (as Dunois), Anton Walbrook (the Bishop of Beauvais), John Gielgud (Earl of Warwick) and Felix Aylmer (The Inquisitor). Cast as the vacillating Dauphin is Richard Widmark. Graham Greene's screenplay refashions the original Shaw text in the form of a flashback. Seberg eventually became an accomplished actress by virtue of her appearances in such nouvelle vague films as Breathless, but it was too late to salvage Saint Joan, which was figuratively burned at the stake by critics and filmgoers alike.
Saint Joan is a 1957 British-American film adapted from the George Bernard Shaw play of the same title about the life of Joan of Arc. The restructured screenplay by Graham Greene, directed by Otto Preminger, begins with the play's last scene, which then becomes the springboard for a long flashback, from which the main story is told. At the end of the flashback, the film then returns to the play's final scene, which then continues through to the end.
This was the film debut of actress Jean Seberg, who won a talent search conducted by Preminger that reportedly tested more than 18,000 young women for the role.
"some odd omissions, interpolations and additions" and that "the result is a certain scrappiness and confusion in the first half of the film in place of Shaw's slow and careful build-up."
Other reviewers complained that an epilogue Shaw wrote was used as a prologue and recurring scene throughout the film. The released film lacks any foreword or historical introduction. Greene, a convert to Catholicism, was also criticized for changing Shaw's view that the entire church was responsible for Joan's execution. The film places the blame on individual judges. The film does not mention that Joan was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1909 and canonized in 1920, unlike Shaw's play, where a "Gentleman" appears in the last scene and announces that Joan has been canonized "in Basilica Vaticana, the sixteenth day of May, nineteen hundred and twenty."[1]) However, in both play and film, Joan's last line is "O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?"
Upon release of the film, Jean Seberg's performance as Joan was soundly panned, and Preminger was heavily criticized for casting an inexperienced unknown in a role which required her to act with veteran actors such as John Gielgud, Anton Walbrook, Felix Aylmer, and others.
Release Date: June 26, 1957
Distrib: United Artists
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