#5
Post
by HerrSchreck » Wed Dec 05, 2007 8:10 pm
Having worked my way through the new issue of Coeur fidèle via the glorious restoration of the film as presented on the fantastic new French Pathe dvd (no Engl. subs but a simple enough story with titles that were easy enough to crack to at glean their essence on the first pass).
I am utterly floored. The man was a magician, a complete and total Cinematic Wizard. Considering the fact that this masterpiece of nuance and utter sophistication was made in the ballpark of just about a year after the man began working in the cinema (his third or fourth film), Epstein has to be considered one of the most impressive talents (and intellects) in the history of the medium. Coeur fidèle is every bit the masterpiece of Usher, Gla. a Trois, the astonishing Finis Terrae, La Tempestaire, etc. SOme who are not as cinematically 'adventurous' (at least in terms of the fractured narrative structure and ambiguity employed so masterfully in the above mentioned titles) may even find Coeur as the masterpiece of his career as it sees him employing his astonishing otherworldly technique of Haunting Visuals, incredible Rendering of Mood, superintelligent yet emotionally innovative mise en scene, plus in-camera effects of superimposition/double exposure, etc, but in the service of a simple, capturing, earnestly rendered love story. And one that is told with the utmost sincerity & beautifully adult sophistication.
I couldn't help but think of Sunrise as I watched this film, observing the differences of the two masters-- Murnau (another man who ramped up to absolute mastery of the medium in a very short time, though not quite as fast as Epstein I must say!) and Epstein of course-- as they set out to 1) please the masses with a heartfelt tale of romance and heartbreak, yet 2) not compromise their artistic integrity.
The differences are striking. While Murnau's film is an absolute complete and total masterpiece of the highest order-- one of the greatest films ever made hands down of course-- there is a sense of adult honesty, a directness, and an emotional specificity to the story of Coeur fidèle that lends a deep intimacy to the film... which gives the sense of the filmmaker as more passionate, having waded deep into the tribulations of loving and losing and loving again, that is absent from Sunrise, which is more a story of Every Husband and Wife.
Murnau, my longtime favorite director, nevertheless seems locked into telling the same tale of Love Corrupted By Outside Forces (which interestingly is the kind of tale Coeur fidèle is also) as a sort of indictment of life in the world, of it's cruel ability to trip up and destroy pure and good love no matter how hard we try. Whereas it can feel almost as though Murnau has made his film from a position Outside The World-- artist as loner etc-- Epstein has made his film from very much Inside The World.. perhaps devasted by the losses dealt by the hands of fate a la Murnau (who lost his great love in WW1, a fellow soldier/companion)... yet still very much inside the process of life itself, making a film not about the gears of destruction ever turning to conspire against two lovers, but about the moments in between, the living, livid moments of passion, of great feeling, living the moments that ultimately become great memories (Epstein knew how to render these moments, to make them look like the ex post facto memories they would become in the minds eye, like no other)... his film is structured around these moments of Feeling.. rendering these moments of longing when the two are separated, and the moments of great happiness and relief when the two are together-- and the feeling or message of the movie gleaned seems to be (VERY French despite Ep's POlish heritage) "Persevere versus the cruel hands of fate, the conspiring of the old world to obliterate the lives and the love of two good and well-meaning people drowning in a sea of human shit and brainlessness and heartlessness: these heightened moments when two are communing together are still worthwhile, and are the overriding Issues To Be Seen; they are the defining moments of significance in small human lives because to persevere is all one can do to commend onesself anyhow," which is very much what the film is about, perseverance despite the gears that Murnau almost seems to have, in utter personal isolation, given up versus in his own life. A lonely and isolated man, living in the world of his dreams and longing-- and his work of course. All of which came together so sublimely, of course.
Another issue to be seen in the Epstein is the utter tour de force nature of it's construction. Beyond a few moments in Griffith's Way Down East, as well as Feyder's Faces of Children (maybe the murder of Alan in Caligari, also), I can tell you that in terms of rapid montage, there are sequences in Coeur fidèle that exceed-- in terms of kineticism, in terms of simple number of edits per second, the rapidity of mosaic-- anything that Eisenstein ever did (save perhaps the machine-gunning sequence in October). I don't know if Eisenstein ever saw this film (and there's a good chance he did since his very next film La Belle Nivernaise seems to have made it to the USSR that same year '23, if the print on the copy that was supplied to me has intertitles that are vintage to the era.. which seems to be the case), but if he did the whole Esther Shub/Griffith theory of his acquisition of the montage idea must be completely re-evaluated. It's all there here in this masterpiece, far beyond those quick stolen moments like the flash when the child faints at his mother's funeral in FACES OF CHILDREN, the chase to the ice floes in WAY DOWN EAST, etc. This film exhibits fully formed, extreme montage which is sustained and repeated throughout a number of breathtaking sequences throughout the narrative from start to end.
As a catalogue of sophisticated film grammar that would within four years become tha hallmarks of The Silent Masterpiece, Coeur fidèle is a virtual lexicon. Given the fact that at the time Ep made it many of these hallmarks were neither hallmarks nor in operation by their most celebrated practitioners (in Germany and the Soviet Union, though of course Gance and L'Herbier deserve mention in this dept), the importance of Epstein, and the astonishing beauty of his first all-cylinders-turning masterpiece, Coeur fidèle, just can't be overstated!
Strain to the point of hernia to see this film somehow, even if you cant read French. Run babelfish alongside, do whatever.