Introduction

Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna was Jean Epstein's fourth published book and the second he devoted exclusively to cinema. Many, but not all, of the articles and lectures on cinema he had published or delivered since 1922 are included, sometimes in augmented or revised form, but none of his other contemporary writings on literature and the visual arts. Circumstantial evidence suggests that it was composed and delivered to the printer before the end of 1925 since it fails to include two short but interesting texts, “L’Opera de l’oeil” and “L’Objectif luimême,” both published in the first weeks of January 1926. The seven short essays extend some of the principal theoretical points first enunciated in Bonjour Cinema: film as a universal language; the transformative powers of the camera apparatus that made it as central to the creation of film art as the men who set up the framing and turned the crank. It is perhaps equally notable for its literary flair. The loosely organized, meandering meditations on the diverse theoretical topics he treats are replete with metaphorical turns of phrases and cultural references that are at once suggestive and elusive, illuminating and frustrating. These strategies were and would remain a distinctive feature of Epstein's reflections on the art to which he devoted his life.

– Stuart Liebman

The Cinema Seen from Etna

Translated by Stuart Liebman

[Jean Epstein, Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna (Paris: Les Écrivains Réunis, 1926).]

Sicily! The night had a thousand eyes. All sorts of smells shrieked at once. An unfurled coil of wire brought our car, swathed in moonlight as if surrounded by mosquito netting, to a halt. It was hot. Impatient, the drivers broke off singing the most beautiful love song, striking the car with a monkey wrench and insulting Christ and his mother with a blind faith in their efficacy. In front of us: Etna, the great actor who bursts onto the stage two or three times each century, whose tragic extravagances I had arrived to film. An entire side of the mountain was a blazing spectacle. The conflagration reached up to the reddened corners of the sky. From a distance of twenty kilometers, the rumbling at times seemed to be a triumphal reception heard from afar, as if a thousand hands were applauding in an immense ovation.