Joan of Arc (1948)

The Bishop of Beauvais negotiates a price for Joan

Joan was burnt at the stake for refusing to put on women's clothes!...according to this movie. Well, not as simple as that. There was other more damning evidence that helped her enemies towards that end. Like, she could have stayed home help mum and dad run their farm and not go on horseback across country fighting the Burgandians and their powerful sponsors the English lords. Perhaps she felt the indignation of the enemy raids upon her village more acutely than most. Whatever, she met a probably inevitable end at a very tender young age. Though she could just as easily have been killed in battle, having been wounded twice. But it's hard to watch someone being burnt, even if in a movie. It's plainly a horrible way to go. It was obviously a terrorising threat the church had over it's subjects to keep all on the straight and narrow. Don't know why neither Stalin nor Hitler thought of using this tool of terror.
It's a great story and its little wonder so many film versions of it have been made. I can't compare this one with the others but Bergman gives a good account of herself in-spite of playing the role of a nineteen year old, many years her junior. Francis Sullivan is great (no pun intended on his physical size) as the Bishop of Beauvais, as he puts to practice his political skills of survival with an eye on his lords and another on his constituents. The battle scene is adequately well done and thankfully not drawn out, but the painted sets including puffy clouds more appropriately belong in stage theatre.
Overall an inspiring film about this unusual historical personage and instructional in the machinations of church politics in the fifteenth century to say nothing of  it's heritage of today.