Joan of Arc has been a popular film subject since 1899, but filmmakers from DeMille to Besson seem to have been determined to keep her from being too heroic.
These links are to six brief reviews of the best-known films made about Joan of Arc during the 20th century.
Brief Reviews of Six 20th Movies about Joan of Arc
Joan the Woman (1917)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
Joan of Arc (1948)
Saint Joan (1957)
Joan of Arc (1999)
The Messenger (1999)
A longer analysis of Luc Besson’s Joan movie can be read in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. III, Spring 2003: “Retiring the Maid: The Last Joan of Arc Movie,” by Peggy Maddox (one of my by-lines).
I am presently preparing a non-academic viewers guide called A Joan for All Seasons. It summarizes what is known about the historical Joan and compares the facts with the cinematic versions of her life and character. This guide will be available for purchase shortly.
My Ph.D. dissertation has been published as Portrayals of Joan of Arc in Film. It discusses the six films in terms of the archetype of the Autonomous Woman. It concludes that, while Joan of Arc has never been portrayed as a hero the way a man is understood to be a hero, her fictional daughter Buffy Summers and the other powerful women of fictional Sunnydale have achieved non-gendered heroism.