In a surprise discovery that parallels Joan’s resurrection (as a historical hero) and transcendence, a complete original print of Dreyer’s original cut was found in a Norwegian mental hospital closet in 1981. The print had apparently been ordered by a doctor there in the 1930s; after an unknown number of screenings, it was stuck in the closet and forgotten for perhaps five decades. This version, called the "Oslo print" to distinguish it from its many predecessors, had some damage but was digitally restored to pristine condition -- after 20,320 splices, scratches, cue marks, and other imperfections had been removed.

Dreyer would go on to create at least three classics of world cinema (Day of Wrath, Ordet, and Gertrud), but in some ways this is his most radical film. He rejected the label of "avant-garde" applied to it from many quarters, no doubt because this ghettoized a film he saw as above all a human document. It’s hard to think of a better term, however, for the film’s visual style. There’s the famous use (some said over-use) of close-ups; surprising images such as the "upside-down and backward" shot of English soldiers, or the swinging camera that makes a building appear to be moving.

If Dreyer disliked "avant-garde," he did agree with "documentary" as a description, albeit more an "emotional documentary" than a "real" one. The film supports this in many respects. Dreyer drew almost entirely on transcripts of Joan’s 1429 trial for his dialogue. He refused to allow his actors to use makeup, an unheard-of conceit at that time but one made possible by the recent introduction of panchromatic film. He even dropped the credits – they were later restored – in order to increase the viewer’s belief in the story. He also disavowed musical scores (though the film was presented with them) as distracting and antithetical to the reality of the onscreen world. (It’s fortunate that Dreyer’s opinion didn’t deter Richard Einhorn from creating his Voices of Light accompaniment. Performed by the vocal group Anonymous 4, soloist Susan Narucki, and the Radio Nederlands Philharmonic and Choir, the score resonates with sweeping medieval harmonies and a majestic solemnity that’s a fine match for the film.)

Dreyer’s demand for realism dictated some bizarre strategies. The actors were signed exclusively to him for the film’s shooting time from May to November 1927, so they had to "live" their roles to the point of keeping their hair cut so it never appeared to change. This was understandable for the lower churchmen who wore visible tonsures – bald heads with a fringe of hair. But Dreyer also demanded that the higher officials keep their tonsures cut, in spite of the fact that they were invisible under the grandiose caps they wore throughout. The cast occasionally got back at him, at least verbally. They secretly began referring to him as "Gruyere" because the set had as many "holes" (trenches Dreyer built for making low-angle shots) as Swiss cheese.

In spite of the film’s realism – helped immeasurably by Rudolph Mate’s brilliant cinematography -- it’s also one of the most stylized, unrealistic in the annals of cinema. Production designer Hermann Warm, famous for his expressionist sets for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, based his work here on a combination of medieval woodcuts and the then-voguish surrealist movement. This is seen in the otherworldly white architecture that recalls the still, strange world of painters like Delvaux or De Chirico, as well as off-kilter images such as the two mismatched windows shown behind Joan. Dreyer’s goal of immersing the viewer in the story wasn’t so complete that he didn’t introduce anachronisms: in one scene, an interrogator is shown wearing 20th century eyeglasses. This kind of sudden, unsettling detail can be seen as an example of the godlike Dreyer in such control he had can afford to be perverse (if briefly), also as a way of introducing yet another level of disturbance to an audience already unhinged by the suffocating number of close-ups.

Dreyer was always known as a controlling, dictatorial director, and with a then-vast budget of $7 million francs (which bloated to $9 million by the end of shooting), he was allowed some luxuries that few filmmakers would see, before or since. He had an enormous, expensive three-dimensional set built, almost none of which is seen in recognizable form in the movie (much to the producers’ chagrin). He shot reams of film, which unexpectedly paid off later when he was forced to construct a new negative out of the ample supply of alternate takes. The film’s over 1,300 individual shots is more than twice the number found in an average feature of the time.

Much has been made of the film’s unusual number of close-ups; this was a strategy Dreyer felt was not only appropriate but one that would become common as cinema matured. That did not happen, of course, but his use of close-ups is among the most harrowing and claustrophobic ever captured on film. Rather than use the device as punctuation, or as a high point, Dreyer uses it to drag the viewer into the psyche of the subject. Rene Falconetti’s face, with its uncanny glowing eyes and mournful looks, proved an ideal map for the emotional territory the director wanted to explore. This performance has rightly been called one of cinema’s greatest.

"The close quarter combat between Joan and her judges" is how Dreyer described his vision of the film, but the "combat" takes place mostly on a spiritual plane, in the sorrowful stares and sudden illuminations that cross the face of Falconetti intercut with the warts-and-all faces of her tormentors. This doesn’t prevent the director from making grim hints at more visceral horrors, as in the montage of torture devices to be used on Joan that Dreyer cross-cuts with her face, or in the violent peasant uprising triggered by her death. But the thrust of the film is the power of spiritual opposition to earthly ambition and corruption, a theme so pervasive that even the architecture supports it. Joan is seen mostly in isolated shots, emblems of her lonely battle against the church and the military, but behind her the viewer is always aware of the serene, almost glowing white walls, which symbolize her purity and transcendence in the face of corrupt earthly forces.