must confront to opposing artistic schools: the Kammerspiel and Expressionism.” The Kammerspiel or chamber-play style concentrates on just the basics, placing reality front and center. This is most evident in the concentration Dreyer places in the close ups of the faces. The expressionist style is less evident since the power of reality is what is most important. The expressionist elements are found mostly in the sets. German Expressionist master Hermann Warm who designed the wildly distorted sets of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari designed the sets for The Passion of Joan of Arc. He deliberately created sets without sharp angles to make the backgrounds focus the emotion created by the actors instead of changing or contradicting it. The overall stylization of the film’s world can be taken to indicate the state of Joan’s consciousness with the flat spaces and shifting angles and framing.The methodology used in shooting the film also holds metaphorical significance. There is a great feeling of uncertainty created by the lack of accurate depth. With all the shots so close up and backgrounds devoid of angles, color, and reference points, everything on the screen is placed in the same plane visually. The lighting is also deceptive since there are few definitive shadows cast to give definition to depth. The Passion of Joan of Arc is not without geometric motifs however. It is noticeably evident that even though there are few well defined lines in the sets, when lines do appear, they appear as a pair of lines intersecting in sharp angles. This is suggestive of the sharp difference in Joan’s viewpoint with that of her judges. The eerily evil presence of the judges is due in part to the camera angles. The action of a scene is rarely centered and the action position jumps around from scene to scene. Mocking grins from the upper left corner and judges leaving Joan’s cell in the bottom left corner. Also, ...
