Six et demi, onze

Six and a Half by Eleven

One of Jean Epstein’s most important works, SIX ET DEMI, ONZE gets its title from the dimensions of a Kodak photograph that performs a key function in the plot. Two brothers are separated when the younger one falls in love with a singer. He commits suicide; his older sibling carries out some investigations and finds out the bitter truth when the Kodak negatives are developed. Epstein’s approach to movement—not in space, but rather in time, as events take place in flashback—is masterful and is just as ahead of its time as the energetically self-reflexive gaze he directs at his own material, the film strip. Henri Langlois was full of enthusiasm about the modernity of this film that started a second wave in Epstein’s filmmaking, the search for “a ‘photogenic’ quality that no longer unfolds in space, but rather in time.…

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Jean Epstein, France, 1926, 86min, One of Jean Epstein’s most important works, SIX ET DEMI, ONZE gets its title from the dimensions of a Kodak photograph…