Art Deanimated, the current show from Martin Arnold at the FACT centre Liverpool plays about with film and images and the perception they create within the view. The most effective piece is a development of The Suffering of Joan of Arc, a 1928 silent film from Carl Theodor Dreyer. Arnold takes the one iconic image of the film, the face of Joan and with some computer trickery randomizes the emotions which flash across her face. So her expression shimmers from happiness to fear and back again and we are left trying to decide what she is reacting to. As a viewer we sympathise with the character even though with this context we’ve no idea what she’s reacting to (because the isn’t actually reacting to anything). Martin Scorsese gave Sharon Stone a tape of this film when he was making Casino as an emotional reference for her. I wonder how manic her work might have been had she only seen this.

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