BY WARREN BOROSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

I’ve written - what? - 10,000 magazine and newspaper articles since I became a journalist back in 1957. For everything from The New York Times Magazine to Word Study. On everything from the next nuclear war (Pakistan versus India, predicted a panel of experts) to a defense of Typhoid Mary (she wasn’t persuaded that she was a carrier) to why blondes have more fun (the bright color shrinks men’s pupils, causing them to overlook facial imperfections).

One article I’m especially proud of appeared a little over 50 years ago -  in December of 1962. It was published in Pageant magazine (long since gone), and was about an obscure actress named Falconetti, who had played in a 1927 silent film, “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” directed by the Danish master Carl Dreyer.

My article began: “This is the story of an actress you probably never heard of, probably never saw, and probably will never get to see.”  Yet she is worth remembering “because she gave one of the greatest performances in the history of motion pictures - perhaps the very greatest.”

I was not entirely accurate. Falconetti and the film have not gone unrecognized. On Dec. 23, Turner Classic Movies showed “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” The film is available from Netflix and via streaming. The other day, the Rosendale Theatre in New York showed the film. The Woodstock Times just ran an article about Falcometti and the film.

Still, when I wrote about her, she had been just about forgotten. As I mentioned, in 1928 a film critic for The New York Times wrote an article about her with the headline, MARIA FALCONETTI GIVES AN UNSURPASSED PERFORMANCE IN ‘THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC.’ But the Times did not publish a word about her when she died in 1944.

I became intrigued with her and the film when I signed up for a course on documentary and other films at The New School in New York City. I was blown away when I saw “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” accompanied by Gregorian chants. I told the instructor that that film was worth the entire course. (He didn’t seem pleased.) The actress portraying Joan, whose name was given as Maria Falconetti, was simply mesmerizing. Her humiliation, her terror, her grief, her suffering were so uncannily believable that you thought you were watching Joan herself.

Later, a fine Joan of modern times, Julie Harris, told me that “I thought Maria Falconetti was the most perfect Joan I could imagine.”

When I asked the New School instructor about her, he said: She was a mystery. No one knows anything about her.

At the time I was working for Pageant magazine, a small, low-circulation magazine, and I asked the editor, Howard Cohn, if I could write an article about this magnificent but mysterious actress, Maria Falconetti. He said yes - if I could find out where she came from and what happened to her.

I did library research. I corresponded with movie critics. I exchanged letters with Carl Dreyer, the director, in Denmark. Dreyer wrote that he had seen her in Paris, on the stage, and knew she would be right for the part. But, along with everyone else, he knew almost nothing about her.

What made my research frustrating was that there was plenty of information about another actress, Renée Falconetti, a good-looking young woman, the youngest actress ever to have joined the Comedie francaise. She had died some years ago, in South America. The theater division of the New York Public Library had a thick folder of material on Renée, but almost nothing on Maria.

I was ready to give up.

In desperation, I consulted a Paris phone book and wrote to all the Falconettis in Paris…. Did they know anything about the actress Maria Falconetti?

Months went by. And a letter from Paris finally arrived. From Helene Falconetti, a lawyer who said she was the daughter of the Falconetti who had starred in “The Passion of Joan of Arc.”

She began her letter by asking, why did I refer to her mother as Maria? When her name was Renée?

I stared at the letter. It took a while for me to comprehend. There was no Maria Falconetti. There was only Renée Falconetti….

I wrote and published my article…. And the New York Public Library theater division (after giving me a little trouble) finally combined its folders on Renée and Maria Falconetti.

Today, if you look up “Falconetti” in Wikipedia, you will see that the first footnote credits me as the source that Falconetti’s true name was not Maria Falconetti, but Renée Jeanne Falconetti.

And if you want to see an astonishing performance by an actress in an utterly amazing film, see “The Passion of Joan of Arc” as soon as you can.