The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Theodor Dreyer's film is built almost entirely from close-ups of a single human face — and it is devastating. Maria Falconetti, in the only screen performance of her career, plays Joan of Arc during her trial and execution, and her face becomes a landscape of suffering, defiance, doubt, and transcendent faith more expressive than any panoramic battle scene. Dreyer stripped away historical pageantry, shooting on stark white sets with no makeup, forcing the viewer into an intimacy with Joan's agony that remains almost unbearable. The film was a commercial disaster on release, and the original negative was destroyed in a fire — the version we watch today was miraculously recovered in 1981 from a Norwegian mental institution. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and an experience that words can only approximate.