Joan the Woman (1916)

There are two things in silent film I'll probably never understand, one is Louise Dressler and the other is Geraldine Farrar. Farrar appeared in few films in her career and remains damn near the only opera star to make a name for herself in silent films. She played a horrible Carmen a year earlier, and here she is cast as an overweight and past her prime Joan. Now maybe I'm just being a big meanie considering she wasn't all that old, but she never really seems fit for the role, certainly not the way we've come to expect our Joan's to be. I suppose Falconetti ruined it for everyone. DeMille however takes her story and of course has to make a very loose modern correlation. This is the earliest film of his I know of that imposes this tactic. Being 1916, he makes the modern story that begins and ends the film about a British soldier in a trench who finds an old 15th century sword. We are led to suppose that this may have belonged to Joan, or at least one of her followers. He is told of a very dangerous mission that would mean martyrdom for himself and while thinking of it he falls asleep. There he is transported to Joan's time as DeMille would have it, a man whose in love with Joan. Only DeMille could make a love story out of Joan of Arc. That hogwash notwithstanding Griffith spared no expense and spent a whopping $300,000 on the plot (I know, but hell gas used to cost about a nickel at that time). The film is helped by some decent support, and look closely and you'll find a very young Ramon Navarro playing a starving peasant.