We are in 1429, period of the "Hundred Years War" between France and England... The story follows the well-known outlines of the short life of the 15th century French saint, Joan of Arc...
Guided by divine Voices, the visionary daughter of a plowman, Joan (Ingrid Bergman), wearing men's clothes, leaves Domremy her village town in Lorraine and takes her long journey to Chinon to meet the Dauphin Charles VII (Jose Ferrer).
Inspired by God to free France from the ravages of the invading English, the peasant girl persuades the indecisive Dauphin to recruit an army and run out the ruthless invaders clearing the way for him to be crown King of France...
Joan leads the French Army to victory over the English forces at Orleans and stands proudly besides her king - as she promised - at his coronation in Rheims' Cathedral...
The Maid's followers believed that she came from God and the Burgundians and English were stricken with fear at her success... But Charles was tricky, ambition and deceitful in his goals... A counterplot was at work as a mean truce is suddenly signed with England, frustrating Joan's zeal to rid France of the enemy...
In an ironic twist of fate, the Maid of Lorraine becomes a political prisoner... She is closely guarded and kept in irons, and is tried as a witch by an English-dominated church court...
With no council to aid her, except her Voices, we see the intrigued illiterate girl, pitted against Bishop Pierre Cauchon (Francis L. Sullivan) trained in all the complexities of legal exhausting questioning...
We may ask ourselves how so many ideas and intuitions are to be found in a person so simple as she was saintly... Joan is, above all things else, the wisdom of a good people... She is the people of France, the plain people of the countryside of Lorraine which is sweet and clean through the courage and faith of the people as much as through the smell of woods and orchards...
Ingrid Bergman portrays with deep conviction her role as the delicate innocent virgin who raised the spirit of the French to hope for better times... She curbed savage England and stopped the spoiling and burning of France... Bergman's smiling face invoked spiritual revelation, the required light of a charismatic true heroine...
Guided by divine Voices, the visionary daughter of a plowman, Joan (Ingrid Bergman), wearing men's clothes, leaves Domremy her village town in Lorraine and takes her long journey to Chinon to meet the Dauphin Charles VII (Jose Ferrer).
Inspired by God to free France from the ravages of the invading English, the peasant girl persuades the indecisive Dauphin to recruit an army and run out the ruthless invaders clearing the way for him to be crown King of France...
Joan leads the French Army to victory over the English forces at Orleans and stands proudly besides her king - as she promised - at his coronation in Rheims' Cathedral...
The Maid's followers believed that she came from God and the Burgundians and English were stricken with fear at her success... But Charles was tricky, ambition and deceitful in his goals... A counterplot was at work as a mean truce is suddenly signed with England, frustrating Joan's zeal to rid France of the enemy...
In an ironic twist of fate, the Maid of Lorraine becomes a political prisoner... She is closely guarded and kept in irons, and is tried as a witch by an English-dominated church court...
With no council to aid her, except her Voices, we see the intrigued illiterate girl, pitted against Bishop Pierre Cauchon (Francis L. Sullivan) trained in all the complexities of legal exhausting questioning...
We may ask ourselves how so many ideas and intuitions are to be found in a person so simple as she was saintly... Joan is, above all things else, the wisdom of a good people... She is the people of France, the plain people of the countryside of Lorraine which is sweet and clean through the courage and faith of the people as much as through the smell of woods and orchards...
Ingrid Bergman portrays with deep conviction her role as the delicate innocent virgin who raised the spirit of the French to hope for better times... She curbed savage England and stopped the spoiling and burning of France... Bergman's smiling face invoked spiritual revelation, the required light of a charismatic true heroine...