Saint Joan
Directed by Otto Preminger, written by Graham Greene, based on a play by G. Bernard Shaw, you’d think this one would have been better received. Looking at popular opinion, it doesn’t sound like an all-out travesty, but along with the poster above, created by the great Saul Bass, what also appeals to me about this film is that it brought the world the soon-to-be-tragic figure of Jean Seberg.
Anyone that reads this site regularly knows I love Jean-Luc Godard‘s Breathless, and one of the main reasons is Seberg and her captivating and magnetic performance opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. She had me at “New York Herald Tribune.” She was beautiful and simple, far from the stereotypical actress you see nowadays. For me the above poster is not only great, it also serves as a symbol and a starting line that lead to the making of what may in fact be my favorite film of all-time.
Had Seberg’s acting teacher not entered her in a contest to star in Saint Joan when she was 17 she wouldn’t have ever auditioned. Preminger wouldn’t have cast her in Bonjour tristesse immediately after she was savaged by critics for her performance in Saint Joan. Francois Truffaut would have never reviewed her performance in Bonjour tristesse and called it “Preminger’s love letter to Jean Seberg”. She never would have met her first husband, Francois Moreuil, on the set of Bonjour tristesse. They never would have moved to France and he never would have introduced her to Godard who then would have never cast her in Breathless. I would have never even known her name.
As it stands, while I have the memory of Breathless to hold on to, there is the sad reality of everything that happened after Breathless from Seberg’s support of the Black Panther Party, talk of the FBI sabotaging her public profile and the sad reality of her eventual suicide. If you’re interested, there’s a fantastic, yet sad, look at Seberg on Criterion’s Breathless Blu-ray and DVD from Mark Rappaport. You should pick it up. After all, it is one of the best films ever… if not the best.
