Film Sonnet 5

She begins brokenhearted. She is barred

From her apartment. She has nothing

To eat and walks around Paris one night

With a man she knew before her troubles.

He takes her to a diner and she sleeps with him

For money. First it was the one man and then

Many men. That’s called prostitution.

It was easier to fall into everything

Once she had done it the one time.

Sontag called this film “near perfect.”

Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc

Is stuffed in the middle, whole sections,

A film within a film, to align great suffering

With the suffering of the humble.