in Oslo, in 1981. A copy of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc is found in a closet of a mental institution. No one’s seen a print as well preserved in over fifty years. When the film is shown to patients at the institution, several reportedly suffer epileptic seizures. A few others reportedly get healed, and are released some months later.
Completed in 1927, the film’s original negatives were destroyed in a fire at the UFA studio in Berlin the following year. Dreyer reassembled the film using alternate shots, but nothing compared to the original version. Surviving copies deteriorated through the next few years. No one would see Dreyer’s masterpiece again until the discovery in the Oslo sanatorium.
In that same year, Annette is working on a documentary on popular hysteria and psychic phenomena. She has just gotten married, and Sylvain has just begun working with the Centre national de la cinématographie. She wants to become a film archivist, to ride the crest of the Nouvelle Vague. Sylvain helps her get a grant to investigate a strange incident in Dozulé, Normandy. Some whacked-out church worker named Madeleine Aumont claims to have seen an image of the cross one morning and to have spoken to God. This is the time of Medjugorje, and Mother Mary has been packing crowds in that obscure Yugoslavian village. It’s a good time to be God. Needless to say, even the bishop of Bayeux takes her case seriously:
“Madame Aumont has been quoting from the Scriptures and the liturgy. As far as we can tell, she knows neither Latin nor the gospels. She speaks only French and has a lisp. When she repeats the messages, her lisp is gone, her Latin is perfect.”
And this is what Annette says to herself (also on film) after that interview: “I don’t think I believe in these things, but it does make an interesting subject for a documentary. I think it’s the mind that makes you see things. The mind can even make you hear the voice of God. And it’s the mind that convinces you it’s all true. We’ll see what she says about that.”
When she finally gets to meet Madame Aumont, she asks if the voice from the cross had personal messages for individuals. Madame Aumont says it has none. “God deals with creation in universal terms. His relationships with individuals are private, unique, and cannot be shared.”
And then, just when Annette is about to run out of film, Madame Aumont adds: “One boy will be lost, another will be saved.”
* * *
Flash-forward: Annette’s just had a son, and her documentary project has grown bigger. As soon as the boy is old enough, the three of them travel to San Crisostomo, in the cluster of islands in northern Philippines, where Annette wants to report on the growing international popularity of faith healing in that country.
This is where the gaps in the story happen, because no other footage of that trip survives, except this:
Annette’s in a canoe with little Mathieu. She’s using a paddle to push the canoe away from the craggy shore. It’s hard to keep them both in the frame. The water’s rough. The canoe bobs up and down. She’s saying something difficult to hear against the crash of the waves. She’s trying to paddle back now. She’s having a hard time. You can hear Sylvain’s voice behind the camera: Oh my God, oh my God. The camera’s dropped, and now all you see is the water sideways. All you hear is Sylvain’s voice grown faint, drowned out by the sound of waves.
* * *
What follows is a series of jerky footage apparently shot on the run, as Marcos declares martial law and the country descends into chaos. What you see gives the impression that Sylvain may have had the camera on randomly, continuously—an unedited journal of the next few days.
Everything happens quickly. Shortly after they return from the island to catch a flight out of Manila, Sylvain comes back to their hotel with a newborn baby in his arms. He’s just heard a horrific story. There are newborn Amerasian babies for sale in the country—children abandoned by GIs in the US base towns. It’s an illegal but relatively easy transaction. None of the usual red tape, none of those pesky social workers Vietnamese babies come with. The babies have to be sold. Unsold ones are thrown back into the litter of mixed-race orphans and wind up as street kids or child prostitutes. In other words, there’s a perfectly humane reason for being an accomplice to the crime.
Here is that clip again. Annette’s holding me in her arms. There’s an indescribable expression of relief and anxiety on her face. You can hear Sylvain’s voice telling her they can use Mathieu’s passport—These monkeys wouldn’t know the difference. She wants to say something, What if they find out it’s not him? Her lips move but something’s wrong with the sound, and no words come out. She seems unable to figure out what to make of this situation. She appears gaunt, bewildered. She lifts her eyes to look at the camera. Her eyes are swollen, like she’s lost a lot of sleep.
* * *
Then there’s a brief and ghostly shot of a TV screen. Marcos is announcing the reasons he’s placed the country under martial law.
Jump cut to Annette nervously boarding the plane, the baby in her arms. She’s bobbing in and out of the frame. Everything’s jerky, and it’s obvious the camera’s being kept on surreptitiously. Soldiers are everywhere, on the streets, at airport security, in the plane before takeoff. A tense moment, off-camera, as we stare at nothing, at what looks like the floor of some room somewhere, and we hear the voice of a customs security officer asking for Annette’s papers, and then Sylvain’s, and then the baby’s.
Months later, they hear that the dictator has dealt decisively with crime. There’s a newspaper clip tucked into the box of this reel. For some reason Sylvain and Annette may have thought the story was important. Quoting the Philippines’ government-run press, the story says that every member of the adoption ring has either been jailed or executed.
* * *
Flash-forward. Clips of my parents’ apartment on rue Cazotte, in Montmarte. Stacks of film everywhere. An editing console looming over one side of the living room. Images of Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc flickering on the monitor.
Sylvain and Annette have been commissioned by the Service des Archives du Film et du Dépôt Légal to digitally restore the recovered print of the film. The images in the video copy are muddy. The light that made Dreyer’s work famously transcendent is barely discernible. But the situation isn’t hopeless. One scene is exceptionally preserved. It’s the one where the monk Massieu, played by Antonin Artaud, warns Jeanne that the tribunal’s question is going to entrap her, and advises her to remain silent.
The question is this: “Are you in a state of grace?”
Jeanne takes a long time to respond. Finally, ignoring the monk’s warning, she replies: “If I am, may God keep me there. If I am not, may God grant it to me.”
I’m watching the scene behind my parents’ backs. The suspense of those fourteen interminable cuts between question and response is too much for me to bear. Something in me shuts down.
When I come to, I find myself lying in my mother’s arms. My father is still on the phone, calling for an ambulance. I’ve drooled all over my shirt. My body feels weak and numb. I look toward the freeze-frame on the monitor. The ghostly, tortured close-up of Renée Maria Falconetti looks down on the three of us. I’m hoping I’m dead, and this is all there is to it: I have, at the age of nine, what you might call a revelation.
* * *
As work on the restoration progresses, Annette and Sylvain take turns looking after me. Improbable causes seem to provoke the seizures: aspirin, milk, even Darjeeling tea. Equally improbable remedies
