The Gaze of the Glass

Jean Epstein

[translated by Keith Sanborn]

The French original was first published in a magazine called Les Cahiers du mois, no 16-17, 1925. It was republished in part in Le cinématographe vu de L’Etna, ch. 1. As far as can be determined, this is the first complete English translation.

…But I do not mean, that one must work in the cinema according to theories, neither these, nor others. The symphonies of movement, which have come into fashion too late, are now quite tedious. Caligarism only offers photographs by painters, which are neither better, nor worse than those of the Salon des Artistes français. The “pompier”* style appears whenever invention ceases, in cubism as in “rapid” montage, or in this sort of cinematographic subjectivism which, by force of superimpositions, becomes ridiculous. One can only write, if one feels and thinks oneself. I would like to approach each of my films as this traveler [does] his train, who arrives at the station only at the next-to-the-last minute, but still with six trunks to check, his ticket to pick up, and his seat to find. He departs, but does he know for where? The grace of God is his only time table without accidents. He arrives in the fatherland of surprises. That’s the country they had promised us.

*[Trans. Not italicized in the original. This refers derisively to imitative academic painters.]