4. The Passion of Joan of Arc
Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc is widely recognized as one of the greatest films ever made, landing on Sight & Sound Magazine's Top 10 Greatest Films list five times, ranking 8th on the Village Voice's list of the best films of the 20th century, and, being dubbed the most influential film of all time by The Toronto International Film Festival in its list of 100 Essential Films. The Passion of Joan of Arc is a staple of film classes world-wide but the original version of this seminal feature was almost lost forever when a fire destroyed the master negative. Fate intervened when in 1981 an employee of an Oslo mental institution discovered film canisters labeled 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' in a janitor's closet. It took three years of restoration before the Norwegian Film Institute could examine the contents of canisters; when they did they discovered Dreyer's original cut of the film, created before government and church censors tampered with it.