The following is part six of a multi-part series chronicling the trials of an aspiring (and not yet there) film snob. For the full story see parts one, two, three, four and five.

There is something about a silent film that makes great demands of your ability to stay focused on the screen at all times. You can’t wander off into the next room, listening half-heartedly to the dialogue, folding laundry or doing chores while you watch. You can’t drift off, your attention wandering here and there. All you have are images and title cards. Maybe a score. And so you have to pay attention.

What this means is simple: To the uninitiated, diving into silent films is no small matter.

The viewing experience is different. Changed. Even the very means through which film imparts its stories, characters and messages can be different in silent film. There is a language in silent films that is unique; a means of showing the viewer what needs to be shown that did not survive to the “talkie” era. Even those elements that did survive to the era of sound often evolved and grew beyond easy recognition, becoming the language of film we know today, present only in their earliest, most embryonic form.

All of this makes silent films a cinematic world of its own, a subset of film study that could (and has) filled volumes. Yet if you’re going to study film, it is these very aspects of silents that make them so vital to explore. Silent film is, after all, the root from which all film we watch today springs. If you want to understand how today’s films developed – and I did (and do) – you have to poke your head into this closet.

Of course, it helps that many silent movies are also fantastic films, silent or not.

They really are. Any person who loves movies owes it to him or herself to watch a few of the classic silent films. I had seen silent film before – maybe some Charlie Chaplin when I was younger, and other assorted odds and ends – but it was always a novelty, a window to a more “simple” time. But now I was preparing myself to look at silent film and examine it as an art form and as an important period of cinema history. To open my eyes. And I’m glad I did. While I’m not expert on the era, with countless great works still on my “to be watched” list, I have quickly come to appreciate the great work that came out of the pre-talkie period and look forward to many other great silent films.

The first silent film I consciously sat down to watch and study was Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s gigantic science fiction epic that explores the gap between rich and poor, and workers and owners, as well as exploring the oppressive weight technology can have on the humanity and spirituality of mankind. I’m a fan of science fiction, making this one a natural to gravitate to. It’s also a legendary film, a huge, costly, epic production that bankrupted a production company, putting it on any short list. And it’s available in a superb DVD edition by Kino, making it perfect for my DVD splurging self.

The first thing that struck me might seem naïve, but so be it. It was thus: This looked really good. I mean, the quality of the image was crisp and clear and looked excellent. Like it could have been filmed fairly recently, even. Somehow, I had convinced myself that silent films are supposed to look bad, full of grain and scratches and defects. But no, this looked really good. Who knew? Certainly not me. Film restoration is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

The second thing that struck me was that, like subtitles, it becomes very easy to sink into a silent film if you allow yourself to. You just have to be open to the language of these films. The acting is very physical and very melodramatic. That makes sense, of course. Performers could not rely on nuanced dialogue. They had to show the audience their emotions and mannerisms, and they had to do so in a big way. You just accept that. You don’t scoff at it, wondering what all the gesturing is about. You absorb it into your film vocabulary and take in what is before you. (The titles cards are very easy if you’ve watched anything at all with subtitles; easier, in fact).

The third and final thing that struck me is that I could never watch these on a regular basis, and that I was quite glad that the era of sound came about. Some great stuff to experience, yes, and stuff I still look forward to experiencing, but not something I’d be inclined to take in regularly. Sound adds another dimension to film that can and has been exploited to great effect by filmmakers, manipulating the audience in a myriad of ways. Sound was a step that broadened the artistic horizons of film in a major way; as good as some of the silent era was, sound became mainstream at just the right time.

But no amount of sound would have made The Passion of Joan Of Arc a better film. This one, this work, this visual fucking painting of pain and faith and bigotry and belief, this was pure distilled genius.

I watched The Passion of Joan of Arc after taking in a number of other silents, including Metropolis, Nosferatu (nightmarish and grim, I believe it represents what a Dracula film should be), and The Birth of A Nation (important to watch from an historical perspective, and impressive in context, but tough entertainment in today’s day and age), so the sheer novelty of watching silent film had pretty much worn off. They remained (and remain) unique to me, but not so much alien. I could wrap my head around their language and accept them for what they are. The Passion of Joan of Arc, though, was light years ahead of anything I had ever seen before.

The amazing thing, heartbreaking because it did happen to so many films we’ll never see, is that this film was almost lost to time. Believed lost for many years, as are the vast majority of films made in the silent era, rotted away or destroyed decades ago by studios that did not understand the artistic history they destroyed, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s heartbreaking masterpiece was rediscovered only recently. Thought long gone, destroyed by fire, in 1981 a print of the film’s original cut was found in all places but a Norwegian mental home. It is that print that Criterion brings to us. And what a blessing to the world of cinema this find was.

Dreyer shows no fear with the camera, pushing it in his performers’ faces, swinging it to and fro like a pendulum, or flipping it upside down to make looming soldiers all the more menacing. The design of the sets is expressive, imparting a tone of menace and a closed-in sense of dread and judgment. It’s otherworldly. Dreamlike. The repeated close-ups, so extreme only Sergio Leone would dream of pushing the camera closer, are suffocating – a perfect feeling to bring to the table, given the tale being told. We see the trial of Joan of Arc through her tortured eyes, and it’s a harrowing experience, painful, unsettling. Her tormentors looming in our face, too; and her face simply haunting the screen. It’s difficult to watch. But you can’t look away.

To say that I was immediately overwhelmed would be an understatement. It quickly became one of the single greatest films I have ever seen, a testament to how powerful the medium of film could be. See it. Now. I entered my still very brief exploration of silent films wholly ignorant of just how sophisticated they could be, but the bombast of Metropolis, the epic sweep of The Birth Of A Nation, the murky nightmares of Nosferatu and the erotic horror of The Phantom of the Opera convinced me that silent film had a lot more to offer than wacky slapstick comedy and cute but amateurish attempts at storytelling. But it was The Passion of Joan of Arc that really turned me on my head.

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc needs no sound to be one of the greatest films ever made. And if that isn’t a lesson that says “silent film is worth watching,” I don’t know what is.

Watch next week for Volume 7, the final weekly installment of Diary of an Aspiring Film Snob.