This film departs from both the historical spectacle films and Jeanne Doré. Sponsored by the French Ministry of War and conceived as a semi-documentary to be used for propaganda purposes, it sought to bring the realities of an otherwise abstract war to the American public. Bernhardt plays a provincial wife and mother who eventually loses her husband and son to the War. Scenes were shot in the small town of Meurcy, and before the statue of Joan of Arc in front of Reims Cathedral. An otherwise “hidden” corner of the war comes to life, while the war’s front is shot in all its symbolic splendor (remember that Reims Cathedral was where Charles VII was crowned, and that Joan of Arc had been beatified in 1909, just 8 years earlier). Released to great fanfare in America, screenings were preceded by the singing of “La Marseillaise”, and audiences’ applause and cries of “Vive la France” apparently drowned out the accompanying orchestra.

Victoria Duckett