The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Th. Dreyer, Société Générale de Films, France, 1928. Renée Falconetti as Joan, using the 1431 Rouen trial minutes; Rudolf Maté's camera stays on faces, and the judges (including Antonin Artaud) crowd the frame, with no makeup. A concrete castle-prison built at Billancourt. French censors and the Archbishop of Paris cut the first release; a fire destroyed the original negative. In 1981 cans sent to Harald Arnesen, director of Dikemark Hospital near Oslo, proved to be Dreyer's Danish-censored 1928 cut, identified by the Norwegian Film Institute in 1984.