<잔 다르크의 열정>의 표현주의적 성격에 대하여

On the Expressionistic Characteristics of The Passion of Joan of Arc

This article is a study on the Expressionistic characteristics of C. Dreyer's eminent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc(1928). Though The Passion is generally categorized as an Expressionist film, many film critics and scholars see the film as a wonderful combination of 1920s' popular European film styles--French Impressionism, Russian Montage films and German Expressionism. My purpose of this article is not to trap the film into one concrete category but to understand for what artistic purpose Dreyer used the Expressionistic elements most strongly in the film. This understanding leads to the further analysis on André Bazin's severe criticism on the Expressionist films, especially <The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari>(Robert Wiene, 1919). Bazin insists that the film did all possible violence to images with painted and distorted set decoration and unnatural lightings. For Bazin, film is destined to represent natural reality or at least a plausible reality which an audience can recognize as what they know in reality. Panofsky also criticizes <Dr. Caligari>, saying that the film pre-stylized our reality before it faces the reality as it is. The ground what Bazin and Panofsky's criticism steps on is that film was born out of photography, a technology which records realty as it is. According to this position, it is not surprising that psycho dramas like <Dr. Caligari> or scientific films like Méliès's <A Trip to the Moon> are treated as 'failures' because these films use artificial background and lighting to express 'what is invisible' or 'what does not exist'. However a lot of films have human being's emotion, imagination, inner conflict, state of mind, dream or fantasy as its main subject matter. If film makers who are interested in these subject matters are restricted in filming outside world as it is, it would be the same thing as to put them in fetters. Camera records whatever it is in front of it. Camera does not make difference between natural reality and artificial reality. Film history is divided into two clearly separated styles, realistic and expressionistic style. Both deserve proper appreciation for their own virtue and beauty rather than disparaged on the basis of one of two positions.