The Passion of Joan of Arc(La passion de Jeanne d'Arc)

Thanks to the success of Master of the House in France, Dreyer was invited to make a film in the country about Joan of Arc, merely several years after she was canonised as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Based on the original transcripts of the revered martyr’s trial, Dreyer’s ‘hymn to the triumph of the soul over life’ is a transcendent film about faith and resilience. Although the film was shot on a single set, Dreyer’s radical forgoing of establishing shots and his audacious use of close-ups (‘You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renée Maria Falconetti,’ wrote Roger Ebert) make this an astonishing exercise on the power of human expressions.

#9 in Sight and Sound's 2012 Greatest Films of All Time