Jean Epstein
Subtitle: Corporeal Cinema and Film Philosophy
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780719086236
Subjects: Motion picture producers and directors; Motion pictures, france; Film criticism
Description: 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. 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 photogénie - towards the experimental sublime, through daring close-ups, rhythmic montage, slow motion, even reverse motion.