Film Forum

U.S., 1948
Directed by Victor Fleming
Starring Ingrid Bergman
Approx. 145 min. 35mm.

“From the time I was a little girl, [Joan of Arc] has always been my greatest heroine,” recalled Ingrid Bergman. “Instead of saving butterflies or stamps, my hobby was to look for things about Joan of Arc, and to collect books and medals and statues of her... She became the character I liked to play most.” Bergman spent her first decade in Hollywood trying to persuade producers to give her an opportunity to play the Maid of Orleans. (“There’s no love story in it,” sniffed David O. Selznick.) Finally Bergman played the role on stage in Maxwell Anderson’s Joan of Lorraine, winning a Tony for her performance. Anderson adapted the play to the screen for this lavish independent production, shot in Technicolor at the Hal Roach Studio under the direction of Victor Fleming, who had guided Bergman through her early triumph in DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941). The epic rendition of Joan’s military campaign and trial was accorded road show treatment before being cut by 45 minutes for general release. JOAN OF ARC won Academy Awards® for its cinematography and costumes, and producer Walter Wanger received a special honorary Oscar® for “distinguished service to the industry in adding to its moral stature in the world community by his production of the picture Joan of Arc”—an honor he refused because the Academy had failed to supply a Best Picture nomination, too.

35mm restoration courtesy UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film