Some extra thoughts on The Passion of Joan of Arc

I reviewed this film a long time back, being one of my favorite movies, but watching it now within the context of Dreyer’s entire filmography, which I was almost entirely unfamiliar with beforehand, I have some extra thoughts.

What’s most interesting from a filmmaking point of view is how out of character this film is considering what came before. Up until this point, Carl Theodor Dreyer was a gifted but rather conventional silent filmmaker. He had a strong sense of storytelling forms and...