u/Mr_BertSaxby

Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928) was released in Paris, France, only 6 months after it was released in Denmark. This was due to the fact that the French Nationalists were offended because Dreyer was neither French nor Catholic. They were also upset by the rumour that an American Actress, Lillian Gish was cast as Joan in the movie.

Under the orders of the Archbishop of Paris and government censors, Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928), received numerous cuts & Dreyer had no control over it. The only negative of Dreyer's version was destroyed in a fire at the UFA Studios in Berlin.

Dreyer then had to stitch together the movie using alternate and unused takes. Unfortunately, that cut too was destroyed in a fire at the French Studio where it was kept. Over the next 40 years a few different truncated versions of the movie surfaced much to Dreyer's dismay.

In 1981, a miracle occurred. When a janitor at the Dikemark Hospital mental institution was cleaning out a store cupboard, he found three film canisters labelled 'The Passion of Joan of Arc'.

These were sent to the Norwegian Film Institute, where they sat unopened for three years before finally being examined. Inside, they found Dreyer’s original 1928 cut, pre-government and religious censorship, fully intact.

("‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’: the silent masterpiece destroyed in a fire (twice)", Sam Kemp, Farout Magazine, 2023).

In Burning, the greenhouse monologue plays like pure psychological horror. Ben isn’t really talking about greenhouses. He’s describing things that are abandoned, unnoticed, easily erased, things no one checks on and no one mourns.

It’s hard not to hear something more human underneath. Not buildings, but people. Women like Haemi, isolated, without a support network, without anyone to mark their absence.

The kind who can disappear without consequence. Lee Chang-dong never confirms it, and that restraint is exactly what makes it so unsettling.

The horror isn’t in what’s shown, but in how perfectly the metaphor fits.

• Athan Montferratos •