Actress. Although she spent most of her life as a stage comedienne actress Maria Falconetti would forever make her place in history for her one and only film role, that of the title role in Carl Dryer’s silent masterpiece “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc” (The Passion of Joan of Arc). Her work in that film, which is comprised almost entirely of close-ups, has been widely hailed as the single greatest performance in the history of film. It was said that her performance came out of working with taskmaster Dryer, that he starved her, deprived her of sleep and forced her to spend hours on her knees on the stone floor. But after making the film she went back to the stage, producing and acting in light comedies. During the Nazi era she fled France for Switzerland and then to Argentina where she spent the remainder of her life. When she died she was, quite ironcally, cremated.