REVISING JOAN OF ARC'S LEGACY; TAKING A LEGEND OFF THE PEDESTAL.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

For most of the century, she has been St. Joan, a woman of divine purpose and unimpeachable actions. Consider the treatment: Carl Dreyer's 1928 silent classic, ``The Passion of Joan of Arc,'' aimed to achieve a ``realized mysticism,'' while Victor Fleming pursued a sincere canonization in his 1948 collaboration with Ingrid Bergman, ``Joan of Arc.'' ``Saint Joan,'' Otto Preminger's 1957 adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play, may have been somewhat ambiguous in tone but remained reverential at its core.

The beatification has not gone on, however, in two projects released this year about the 15th-century heroine. The first, ``Joan of Arc,'' debuted as a four-hour miniseries on CBS in May and was recently released on tape and DVD by Artisan Entertainment. Here, Joan, played by 16-year-old Leelee Sobieski, was portrayed as a real and imperfect young woman; a legend, but one relatable to the all-important 16- to 24-year-old audience coveted by networks during sweeps periods.

Arriving in theaters this week is Luc Besson's ``The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc,'' which takes the revisionism even further. The film suggests that the voices that inspired Joan to unite France under Charles VII might not have come from God, but were instead a result of self-delusional hysteria. As played by model-actress (and estranged wife of Besson) Milla Jovovich, Joan is as much of a kook as she is a saint, a balance Besson believes is long overdue.

``Joan the saint is too big; I cannot learn anything from her,'' the French-born director says. ``When you portray someone who is untouchable, all the audience can do is watch and say, `Thank you for making me feel small.' I wanted to make a movie that would give her back to the audience, to normal people.''

Of course, Besson is hardly the first to put a different spin on Joan's life. Historians, essayists and novelists have been busy overhauling Joan for the past five centuries; movies are only now catching up. In fact, until she popped up as an ersatz aerobics instructor in ``Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure'' (how's that for an unlikely landmark?), Joan had primarily been seen in one light - a divine one.

``Feminism adopted Joan as an example of female heroism, but it took a while for movies to look at her in a different way,'' says USC English professor Leo Braudy, whose book, ``The Frenzy of Renown,'' examines fame, including Joan's, throughout history. ``The problem with Joan is that if you say she's crazy and didn't hear voices, it undermines what she accomplished. So a lot of people just steer entirely clear of that and you have the portraits of her as a saint.''

Dreyer's portrait remains the most compelling. ``The Passion of Joan of Arc'' focuses solely on the final stages of her trial and her execution. Dreyer, a Dane, wasn't interested in costumes or battle scenes, but in creating a ``hymn to the triumph of the soul over life.'' The film is a tapestry of close-ups, featuring a remarkably intense performance from Renee Falconetti, whose facial expressions tellingly convey a profound sorrow and spirituality. It was Falconetti's only film role.

A master print of ``Passion'' was destroyed in a fire, as was a subsequent version that Dreyer cobbled together of alternate takes. However, a surviving print of the original was found in 1981 at a Norwegian mental hospital and Criterion Collection has put together a brilliant DVD and video from this version. The DVD arrived in stores Tuesday.

``It has been a tough film to watch because the existing prints haven't been very good,'' says Criterion producer Issa Clubb. ``It's also a movie that kind of scares some people because it has this reputation for being such a relentlessly intense film. And admittedly, it is, but I think we've provided a version that will help people appreciate and discover it for the masterpiece that it is.''

The main addition is Richard Einhorn's oratorio, ``Voices of Light,'' a powerful choral and instrumental piece, that accompanies the movie on video. (On DVD, viewers can watch the film with or without the oratorio.)

Einhorn composed the piece after seeing ``Passion'' for the first time in 1988 and being ``blown away'' by the film's power. He never intended the music to actually accompany the film (it is available as a separate CD on the Sony Classical label), but the oratorio's running time nearly coincides with the movie's 82-minute length. And the film plays beautifully with it.

It is difficult to imagine anyone, say, 50 years from now, being equally inspired by Besson's ``The Messenger'' or the recent CBS miniseries. Both projects, in their attempts to humanize Joan, try a little too hard to make her relevant to modern times, and the effort shows.

A comment from ``Messenger'' star Jovovich underscores the simplistic approach. ``She's a woman with a mission,'' Jovovich says. ``And I think a lot of girls today can understand that.''

As modern Joans, Jovovich and Sobieski look great and execute Joan's battle scenes with a remarkable physicality. But when they open their mouths, you almost long for the days of Dreyer's silent era. At one point in the miniseries, Joan is asked by a trusted friend, ``Where's all this going?'' Sobieski, as Joan, replies: ``I dunno. I just take it all as it comes.'' Surprisingly, she was not chewing gum when she said this.

``The Messenger'' is also filled with another nod to modern times - graphic brutality. There are decapitations, severed limbs and an explicit rape scene involving Joan's sister. The soldiers use the f-word an alarming amount for 15th-century times, although we're spared the dubious thrill of hearing Joan utter it. Her mouth, at least, remains chaste.

``That's a casualty of modern filmmaking,'' Braudy says. ``Directors feel like they have to show everything instead of implying things and let the audience use its imagination.''

One cannot help but contrast such vivid harshness to the poetic power of Dreyer's powerful close-ups of Falconetti, shots that took days of work to get right.

Said Dreyer in an interview: ``With Falconetti, it often happened that, after having worked all afternoon, we hadn't succeeded in getting exactly what was required. We said to ourselves then, `Tomorrow we will begin again.' And the next day, we would have the bad take from the day before projected, we would examine it, we would search and we always ended by finding, in that bad take, some little fragments, some little light, that rendered the exact expression, the tonality we had been looking for.

``It was from there that we would set out again, taking the best and abandoning the remainder. It is from there that we took, in order to begin again . . . and succeed.''

That meticulousness resulted in one of the great films of the century, a work that all cinematic portraits of Joan will forever be measured against. Dreyer's obsession, too, neatly parallels a quality of the heroine that helps explain her enduring appeal.

``Joan embodies the romantic myth of the uncompromising artist,'' Einhorn says. ``She was true to her inner voice until death.''

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4 Photos

PHOTO (1 -- cover -- color) The new face of Joan - Milla Jovovich makes latest bid for cinematic sainthood in `The Messenger'

(2) Renee Falconetti starred as Joan of Arc in Carl Dreyer's 1928 silent classic, ``The Passion of Joan of Arc.''

(3) Rejuvenated by their new leader, St. Joan (Milla Jovovich) leads French troops into battle at Orleans in ``The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.''

(4) A battle-weary Joan (Milla Jovovich) is captured by Burgundians, British-employed mercenaries, in the latest version of the story of the French martyr.