Saint Joan *** (1957, Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark, Richard Todd, Anton Walbrook, Felix Aylmer, John Gielgud) – Classic Movie Review 9255

Producer-director Otto Preminger’s 1957 biographical drama Saint Joan stars Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark, Richard Todd, Anton Walbrook, Felix Aylmer and John Gielgud. Despite this strong cast, it was always going to be a tricky task to turn a famous play, first staged in 1923, into a movie, with an 18-year-old from Marshalltown, Iowa, making her debut as the 15th century 17-year-old French peasant girl Joan of Arc, who is burned as a witch.

Happily Graham Greene was persuaded to write the screenplay adaptation from George Bernard Shaw’s famed play, and boldly added lines to the original play, such as ‘She’ll burn before the Pope gets to hear of it!’, and having the epilogue mention the Nazi occupation of Paris.

But was Preminger the right choice to direct and did he make the right choice when he picked unknown Jean Seberg as Joan of Arc in a talent-spotting trawl through America?

Whatever Seberg’s talents, and they later proved considerable, they were overwhelmed in this setting and Preminger lets the pace and mood go wobbly. There were stories of the autocratic Preminger giving Seberg a hard time during filming.

There is an abundance of admirable work from the other experienced players to keep the viewer watching, and the play’s interest and intelligence remain intact. Gielgud is superb as the Earl of Warwick, and there are outstanding performances from Walbrook as Cauchon bishop of Beauvais, Widmark as the daft Dauphin (Charles VII), and Aylmer as the Holy Inquisitor.

Also in the cast are Archie Duncan, Harry Andrews, Finlay Currie, Bernard Miles, Barry Jones, Margot Grahame, Francis De Wolff, Victor Maddern, David Oxley, and Patrick Barr.

Georges Périnal shoots in black and white, all in Shepperton Studios, Surrey, England. Inevitably, the film is stagey.

The story is also told in Joan of Arc (1948) with Ingrid Bergman and Joan of Arc (1999) with Milla Jovovich.

Jean Seberg’s story is told in Seberg (2019). As highlighted in that film, an on-set special effects accident caused Jean Seberg to catch fire in the scene where Joan of Arc is burned, though she sustained only minor injuries.

Preminger selected Seberg from a host of unknowns to make her screen debut in the title role after a much-publicised contest involving about 18,000 hopefuls. She landed the role one month before her 18th birthday. She survived lukewarm reviews and the film’s box office failure, went on to work with Preminger again in Bonjour Tristesse (1958), and was then picked by Jean-Luc Godard as his star in Breathless (1960), becoming a French New Wave icon. Arguably her best American film is Lilith (1964).

Audrey Hepburn supposedly turned it down because her husband Mel Ferrer was not offered the role of the Dauphin.

 © Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9255

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