Jean Epstein

<p>If cinema can be approached as poetry and philosophy it is because of Jean Epstein. Cocteau Buñuel (who was his assistant) Hitchcock Pasolini and Godard and theoreticians Kracauer Deleuze and Rancière are directly influenced by Epstein's pioneering film work writings and concepts. This book is the first in English to examine his oeuvre comprehensively.<br><br>An avant-garde artist and an anti-elitist intellectual Epstein wanted to craft moments of pure transformative cinema. Using familiar genres - melodramas and documentaries - he hoped to heal viewers of all classes and hasten social utopia. A lover of cinema as cognitive and sensorial technology and a poet of the screen he pushed cinematography - as <i>photogénie</i> - towards the experimental sublime through daring close-ups rhythmic montage slow motion even reverse motion. <br><br>Polish-born half-Jewish and the author of a treatise on homosexuality Epstein has been unfairly relegated to the shadows of film history. This book restores him to the limelight of interwar world cinema on a par with Renoir Lang Capra and Eisenstein.</p>