[5] Protesting in vain against Pabst's changes to his original work (including a happy ending not in the book), he tried to have his name removed from the titles, condemning the resulting film for its philistine morals, such as having communist Andreas kneel in front of the holy virgin.

[5] After Alfred Hugenberg had acquired the producing company UFA, more changes were demanded against Pabst's will, including the almost complete deletion of the scene with Jeanne and Andreas spending the night at the hotel.

[6] The restored German version was first screened with live music at the UFA Filmnächte in Berlin in August 2017[8] and premiered on Arte TV the following month.

[5] Kenneth MacPherson, co-editor of film magazine Close Up, gave The Love of Jeanne Ney coverage in several issues, rating it superior to Pabst's Joyless Street for being "more complete" and "dynamic"[11] and calling Édith Jéhanne's performance "admirable".

[12] MacPherson had been shown Pabst's original cut in Berlin before the film's release and gave the director the opportunity to explain his technique of editing on actors' movements.

[11] Shortly after World War II, film historian Siegfried Kracauer noted in his book From Caligari to Hitler, "The Love of Jeanne Ney exceeds [Pabst's] Joyless Street not only in scope of vision, but in the determination with which it records reality".

[13] Kracauer nonetheless commented negatively on the production company's deletion of all provoking political and moral content of the source material.

[14] Reflecting on Pabst's filmography in his 2006 essay for the Criterion Collection, J. Hoberman rated The Love of Jeanne Ney as one of "the culminating works of silent cinema", being "an ambitious attempt to synthesize Soviet montage, Hollywood action-melodrama, and German mise-en-scène.