Executioner David Oxley as Gilles de Rais ("Bluebeard") Patrick Barr as Captain La Hire Critical reaction Several reviews, including two in The Times, noted that Greene's condensation of the play resulted in "some odd omissions, interpolations and additions" and that "the result is a certain scrappiness and confusion in the first half of the film in place of Shaw's slow and careful build-up." Other reviewers complained that an epilogue Shaw wrote was used as a prologue and recurring scene throughout the film. The released film lacks any foreword or historical introduction. The film does not mention that Joan was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1909 and canonized in 1920, unlike Shaw's play, where a "Gentleman" appears in the last scene and announces that Joan has been canonized "in Basilica Vaticana, the sixteenth day of May, nineteen hundred and twenty.") However, in both play and film, Joan's last line is "O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?" Stanley Kauffmann called Saint Joan a disaster. Upon release of the film, Jean Seberg's performance as Joan was soundly panned, and Preminger was heavily criticized for casting an inexperienced unknown in a role which required her to act with veteran actors such as John Gielgud, Anton Walbrook, Felix Aylmer, and others. Historical inaccuracies During and after Charles' coronation, the choral music, and later the organ music, is in the style of Handel and Bach, who lived and worked in the early 1700s. Some of the vocabulary is unusual - it is doubtful that the term "cowboy" was in use in 1300s France; the word "slut" was in use in the 1300s, but it meant an untidy man, or possibly floor dust. The phrase, "God is on the side of the big battalions," quoted in the film, was first said by Napoleon Bonaparte, more than four centuries after Joan. Richard de Beauchamp corrects the French bishop, defining the French legal court as a "Catholic court," as if it were the opposite of an English "Protestant court" (86 years before Protestantism was proclaimed by Martin Luther). In the ending scene the English refer explicitly to papal infallibility, a doctrine which would not be precisely defined until 1869. See also Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc List of American films of 1957 List of historical drama films References External links 1957