Forces of Transgression
and Revolt

“As it sketched its very first aesthetic differentiations with the spectacles of nature, the cinematograph was choosing between God and Satan, and siding with the latter. Since whatever moves will transform… photogénie, as a fundamental rule, clearly dedicated the new art to the service of the forces of transgression and revolt.”            

 - Jean Epstein, Le cinéma du Diable (Paris: Éditions Jacques Melot, 1947), p. 45

 

             During the long months of COVID-induced lockdown, I found myself diving into silent films, particularly those of Jean Vigo and Jean Epstein's films. I was struck by the recurring theme of time as the delicate relationship between stasis and change. Watching these films during a period of stagnant routines and uncertain futures added a profound layer of significance to their narratives. As I reflected on my own life amidst the pandemic, these themes served as a reminder that even in times of stagnation, the potential for transformation and growth still exists. 

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Although contemporaries, Vigo and Epstein's respective oeuvres and aesthetic outlooks are very different. Epstein is often lumped together with French Impressionist Cinema, while Vigo helped establish a poetic realism movement alongside like-minded filmmakers such as Jean Renoir. Yet, the two men share somewhat eerie similarities in their professional and personal lives. Aside from sharing the same first name, the two Jeans also met early deaths: Epstein died suddenly in his mid-50s from a cerebral hemorrhage, and Vigo died at age 29 due to complications from tuberculosis. While in & out of the hospital, plagued by illness, Vigo had even read the film theories of Jean Epstein. 

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In a proper historical context, it shouldn't be too surprising that Vigo knew of Epstein, whose work had been widely disseminated throughout the newly emerging European literary and journalistic publications. Epstein was, in fact, one of the first directors whose films were directly informed by his written criticism and theory. He was born in Warsaw to a Polish mother and a French-Jewish father in 1897. While attending medical school at the University of Lyon in France, Epstein served as a secretary and translator for Auguste Lumière. Around this time, Epstein's interests turned to the arts, first as a critic and finally as a filmmaker. His writings and films vary greatly in their purpose and style, but he always develops ideas about the scope and potential of cinema. Epstein's most notable contribution to film theory centers around the somewhat abstract concept known as photogénie, which describes the elusive, mysterious, and indefinable qualities that elevate a film to art. Epstein expanded on the idea: for him, photogénie was the brief moments within a film caused by a perfect, unpredictable combination of elements that capture cinema's essence. Early film critics like Epstein were captivated by cinema's ability to capture a reality beyond the screen with such an immediacy unavailable for art forms like literature and painting (this is not to invalidate the other arts; on the contrary, Jean Epstein was enamored by them).

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A literary critic before he was a film critic, Epstein also let literature directly inform his films, like his 1928 adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. This film remains one of the best adaptations of Poe to the big screen, not because of its faithfulness to the source material but rather due to Epstein's ability to evoke Poe's gothic sensibilities. He employed various stylistic and technological features available at the time for dramatic and aesthetic purposes. In Poe's short story, the allegedly sentient mansion of Roderick and Madeline Usher is eerie and decidedly melancholic, inspiring in the narrator "an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart." Epstein often elicits this sense of dread with low camera angles. Today, it's taken for granted that a low-camera angle conveys power to the spectator, but this was at the beginning of film theory, and conventional movies were still primarily filmed in static medium shots. Epstein was also innovative in his use of movement, utilizing different panning and tracking shots, pulling the audience further into the film. His use of slow motion, rapid cutting, intricate lighting, and other camera tricks not only lend themselves to creating a dreamy and supernatural ambiance; they also bring the film closer to the realm of photogénie. In these brief moments of a close-up of Roderick's face or hands amid his frantic attempts to paint a portrait of his ill sister, we begin to experience the essence of cinema and its ability to communicate something beyond our understanding, like madness. 

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Epstein used his film theory and technique five years earlier to communicate another phenomenon beyond description: love. His second feature film, Cœur fidèle (The Faithful Heart, 1923), centers around an unhappily married woman whose true beloved is falsely imprisoned. Marie is an orphan adopted and exploited by a bar owner and his wife in the port of Marseille. She is pursued romantically by Petit Paul, a drunken idler, but Marie secretly loves Jean, a dockworker. A policeman is stabbed in a fight between the two men, and Jean is arrested unjustly. Shortly after, we see the triumphant Petit Paul and the dejected Marie ride an airplane carousel at the local fairgrounds. The camera sits in front of the couple, taking two shots and close-ups of them as they fly through the air; the scene is intercut with blurred footage of their surroundings whooshing by them, reflecting the turmoil in Marie's mind. The detestable villain looms over the heroine as she quietly comprehends her fate. One year later, Jean is released from prison, only to discover Marie with a child fathered by Petit Paul, who spends all their money on drink. The love triangle ends with a violent confrontation that kills Petit Paul. The film's epilogue takes us back to the swing ride. This time, Jean and Marie share a seat, finally free to love one another. But the camera lingers on their faces as they swing around the fairgrounds; their faces betray a melancholy look, suggesting the experience has left its mark on their lives. 

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Jean Epstein directed over forty short films, documentaries, and feature films. Jean Vigo, by comparison, was only able to make four films; his filmography's combined runtime clocks in at less than three hours total. In many ways, his life itself sounds like a movie. Vigo was born in 1905; his father was Miguel Almereyda, a French journalist and anarchist activist. Much of Vigo's early life was spent on the run with both of his parents. Almereyda was murdered in prison when Jean was only twelve, leaving him profoundly affected. Understandably, his early work is bubbling with anger, sometimes with a mocking tone. His first short film, À propos de Nice (1930), is a subversive travelog that depicts life in Nice and documents the social inequalities within the French resort city. The film is, in part, a response to the general formalism of the city-symphony genre. Using the principles of the "montage of attractions," expounded by Soviet filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, the documentary combines authentic images shot with a hidden camera and staged elements. It also uses surrealist sight gags and irony to convey the boredom of the upper class at the shore and the struggle of the lower class in the slums. In Vigo's words, A propos de Nice presents "the last gasp of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution." His work was so countercultural that it sometimes didn't pass French censors. Zéro de conduite (1933) was denied a public screening until 1945, more than a decade after Vigo's death. The plot revolves around four rebellious boys at a repressive boarding school who revolt against their teachers and take over the school. Censors deemed such blatant critiques of the national education system to be capable of "creating disturbances and hindering the maintenance of order." It was rediscovered after World War II and has since garnered international acclaim, directly influencing Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959). Today, the images of the boys running up the roof or the feathers from their pillow fight floating through the air as they begin their overthrow are synonymous with rebellious cinema. 

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L'Atlante (1934), Vigo's last and longest movie, also failed to find financial or critical success for decades after its release. Filmed while he was ill and sometimes bedridden, L'Atlante is considered Vigo's most "conventional" movie, but it is also quietly his most affecting work. The plot is simplistic: small-town girl Juliette and barge captain Jean marry, and she comes to live aboard his boat. As they go down the Seine, the couple struggles to adjust to married life. Juliette doesn't feel at home on the ship, longing to escape the barge's monotony and experience the big cities' hoopla, while Jean grows increasingly jealous of her presence near the rest of the ship's all-male crew. One night she sneaks off the barge to take a little trip to Paris—never intending to leave her husband. Jean, however, unaware of this, continues down the river without her. Miserable apart. Eventually, they reunite, with some of the naiveté gone, yet both are committed to starting their journey together again. This ending perhaps reflects a shift in Vigo's worldview from mockery to tenderness, from cynicism to acceptance. L'Atlante, despite its realist trappings, is more richly detailed and emotionally resonant than most films from that era. This is evident in the memorable underwater dance sequence. Juliette told Jean throughout the film that "you can see your beloved's face in the water," which he mocked until he was at his lowest point, broken and alone. He dives into the murky waters of the Seine and floats into a sort of fluid realm of imagination where he is now beyond jealousy, finally able to see the face of his beloved. It is one of the most lyrical images in cinema, a precise combination of elements (dissolves, underwater cinematography, the score, and layered performances by Jean Dasté & Dita Parlo) that move the film beyond realism into the ethereal realm of photogénie. 

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Enthusiastic creativity is a common thread for both Vigo and Epstein; they could capitalize upon cinematic features available to this new art form for dramatic and aesthetic purposes. Their distinct styles and unique approaches focused on themes concerning reality, time, consciousness, love, and more. In his writings, Epstein observed that the fundamental energies underlying cinema are stillness and movement; there is tension between the still frames and a camera set into motion. Similarly, there is a constant tension between stasis and change in life. That era witnessed immense social and technological changes that happened broadly and rapidly. What better tool for expressing the constantly shifting modes of being than cinema, continually undergoing rapid technical and aesthetic shifts? Both men understood these shifts made cinema a uniquely subversive art form that can enact positive transgressions over time. According to Epstein, they saw the notion of change, which draws its energy from the "forces of transgression and revolt"; transgressive yet ultimately life-affirming. Both saw this power as revolutionary; cinema provides an artistic mode for making sense of and transforming the world. Contained within this supreme expression of freedom is a political undercurrent that considers the absurdist nature of a society divided by an unjust system, a sustained attack on complacency. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jean Epstein and Jean Vigo were directors and theorists decades ahead of their time. In the present day, anxieties have emerged once more about the nature of cinema and its future. Like all other industries, the film industry faced economic hardships during the pandemic, which exacerbated concerns regarding the end of the theatrical experience amidst the influx of streaming services. But this crisis is one of many that have come as part of the cyclical nature of cinema as it adjusts itself in the wake of our irreversible social, technological, and global changes. Stasis and change will always be central tendencies in cinema, as they have always been in humans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Supporting Works

 

• Almereyda, Michael. “Jean Vigo.” The Criterion Collection. The Current, August 31, 2011. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1976-jean-vigo. 

• Ivins, Laura. “What Is Photogénie?” Indiana University Cinema. IU, July 20, 2017. https://blogs.iu.edu/aplaceforfilm/2017/07/20/what-is-photogenie/. 

• Keller, Sarah, and Jason N. Paul. Jean Epstein Critical Essays and New Translations. Amsterdam University Press, 2012. 

• Pringle, Thomas Patrick. "Vigo, Jean (1905–1934)." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Taylor and Francis, 2016. https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/vigo-jean-1905-1934. doi:10.4324/9781135000356-REM353-1

• Still Moving: The Film and Media Collections of The Museum of Modern Art by Steven Higgins, New York: The of Modern Art, 2006, p. 130