Our print is the rediscovered director's cut, shown here for the first time in 1985. Dreyer's most celebrated film was made in 1927-28; it has continued to haunt the cinema, looking more and more avant-garde as the years go by. His depiction of the trial and execution of Jeanne d'Arc (condensed for the sake of narrative from eighteen months to one day) was written largely from the actual records of the trial and based on historical evidence which had come to light only recently, in 1924. Dreyer knew what certain contemporary filmmakers are only now discovering: as drama, political trials speak for themselves as the ethos of an age. The case of Jeanne d'Arc was a natural for Dreyer, the film a key work in the portrait of woman, quietly and steadfastly raging against a paternalistic order, that made up his entire oeuvre. The film is renowned for its austerity: the starkness of its sets, Dreyer's refusal to allow his actors to use make-up on faces which are captured in extreme close-up. Precisely in its austerity, it is one of the most terrifyingly and unrelentingly emotional works ever filmed. Empathy is too weak a word for the unity Marie Falconetti (in her first and last film role) evokes-entirely without sentimentality-with us, the audience. Rudolph Maté's camera captures within the players-including Antonin Artaud and Michel Simon-a landscape of history as individual as a human face.