So today, I watched a bunch of religious conservative old men attack an outsider vying to be the standard-bearer of their organization. They used everything at their disposal — insults, bargaining, threatening, faux-sympathy — in an attempt to get the outsider to break and surrender, but none of it worked; the outsider stayed firm in their belief that they should be a representative of an organization that despised them.

And the hell of it is, the outsider clearly is either deluded or a fraud, but the establishment figures can’t come right out and say that, because they’ve built their whole lives on a slightly milder version of the same fraud/delusion. So all they have left as ammunition is weird hyper-technical arguments that convince nobody, so the support of the angry populace stayed with the outsider. And ultimately, things ended the only way they could: In flames.

And after taking in Super Tuesday stuff, I watched this movie about the trial and death of Joan of Arc.

So this is another silent movie, French this time. The story (which really is outlined above) is pretty slow and repetitive — there are a LOT of scenes of craggy old dudes threatening Joan — but the movie does have one huge thing, which is the performance of the actress playing Joan of Arc. It’s a silent performance, of course, which means she’s acting with nothing but facial expressions, and the power of her performance is such that I pretty much forgot that until just now.

The movie is filmed almost entirely in close-ups (many of which would make gallery-worthy portraits as stills), so her face is on the screen for roughly half of the movie, with expressions ranging from feverish holy ecstasy through suspicion and disbelief and sorrow and regret and fear and suppressed pain and serenity; the old dudes interrogating her also act with credible subtlety their venality, anger, frustration, deceit, sympathy, etc.

If Man with a Movie Camera is all about the director, this is all about the actors, and particularly the actress. Not exactly a fun movie, but this is another one where I do see why it’s on the list and can appreciate those qualities.