There was a flurry of interest in Joan Of Arc in the mid 1950s. Anouilh's 1953 play Alouette is the source for this now timely record of the recently deceased Julie Harris' 1955 Broadway role. Also in 1953 Roberto Rossellini began a series of performances in Europe with his wife Ingrid Bergman of Arthur Honegger's 1933 oratorio on Joan which he later turned into a film with her, released in 1955. Finally, Otto Preminger presented a controversial movie of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan in the summer of 1957, starring an unknown, Jean Seberg. Of these the Seberg rendition is the weakest as she was a novice, Bergman and Rossellini's version offers the spirituality they brought out in each other, and beautiful music.(Bergman had played Joan previously in a 1948 Hollywood epic.) I'm not sure how much of The Lark is lost in the adaptation (credited to Lillian Hellman) of Anouilh's French, but the quality of the acting that was offered regularly to Hallmark Hall Of Fame viewers was high.Harris adds a degree of sweetness,innocence, and a certain tomboy quality to her interpretation.
