Twentieth-Century Films about the Middle Ages and Joan of Arc

FAIN: FT-52438-04

Laurie Anne Finke
Kenyon College (Gambier, OH 43022-5020)

"Watching the Middle Ages" examines popular films about the Middle Ages as a means of understanding the ways in which the twentieth century has imagined the Middle Ages. The stipend will fund work on chapter four, tentatively entitled "The Politics of Hagiography," which deals with three chronologically significant films about Joan of Arc: Dreyer’s "Passion de Jeanne d’Arc," Victor Fleming’s "Joan of Arc," starring Ingrid Bergman, and Luc Besson’s "Messenger." These films are especially useful among the fourteen film versions of the saint’s life made in the last century because they reveal so much about the relationships between nationalism and religious fervor.