[In the following essay, Wunscher praises the magical elements of Epstein's work, noting that their lack of dialogue provides a more pure cinematic experience.]

Being about the same age as the sound film myself, I am one of the generation that was astonished when the characters in Modern Times didn't talk. Of course, since that time, I have seen Potemkin, Caligari, La Charrette Fantome, The Kid, Greed, Metropolis, Chapeau de Paille d'Italie, etc., but I have never been as fascinated by silent images as I was by Jean Epstein's, whose shadows have outlived him. Again, I had never before realised how much the screen lost when it was allowed to talk. Living in a white frame, Epstein's phantoms take on an independent existence, a true gift of mystery and enchantment.

After having seen for the first time, at the rate of three a day, most of Jean Epstein's films, my judgment is somewhat paralysed. What can one say, except that they are beautiful, with the incontestable beauty of masterworks? Epstein gave me something I had been vainly searching for in contemporary production (and had failed to find except in Renoir and Ford): a purely cinematic emotion, a beauty based uniquely on rhythm and the plastic perfection of moving images.

While these memories are still fresh, I must try to analyse something of what I found.

Up to La Chute de la Maison Usher (1928), Epstein's films seem curiously demodé. Certainly, there are some remarkable moments—the night sequence and the execution in L'Auberge Rouge (1923), the two lovers meeting by the water's edge and the country fair in Coeur Fidèle (1923), the automobile death race in La Glace à Trois Faces (1927); but the "modernistic" and historical styles of decor appear restrictive now. When one remembers that he made these films between the ages of 25 and 29 (he was born in Warsaw, of a French father, in 1897), one is inclined to reconsider this verdict; yet the general impression persists.

La Chute de la Maison Usher stands a little apart from the rest of his work. (It is little known, incidentally, that Bunuel was the assistant director.) The film contains some unforgettable imagery: the vistas of corridors with a wind sweeping down them, the bizarre hangings, guttering candles, the supernatural features of Madame Gance, and the splendid, marvellous, strange and too brief sequence of the burial, in which four men, walking through a landscape stripped bare by autumn, carry a white coffin behind which floats a long white veil. Edgar Allan Poe was not betrayed.

But the real revelation comes with Finis Terrae (1929), and continues up to Le Tempestaire (1947), films with a love and understanding of the sea, of Brittany, and of simple, noble, hard-pressed people. Before writing of Rossellini and the birth of neo-realism, critics should look at these films by Epstein. All the beauty of the austere images in the final scene of Paisa is already there in 1929, in Epstein's figures stretched out on a white sandy beach, scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding rocks.

The actors in these films are not only Bretons and thickset Breton women, always in mourning for a loved one; they are, too, the unceasing wind, blowing salt water spray along with itself, flattening the drenched manes of horses, swallowing up candle flames, eddying peasant women's skirts already soaked by the rain and the sea, fluttering black veils against a grey sky—the wind that twists round trees, bends flimsy grasses, sharpens the sound of horses galloping on the little island of Bannec; and, above all, the sea, that Epstein never tires of photographing—calm, crowned with circlets of foam, swelling, breaking ceaselessly on the rocks, sending up its immaculate foam to fall again, slowly, on succeeding waves; the sea of great storms, sometimes throwing up an oar, sometimes a body, sometimes a necklace, sometimes a mysterious casket, containing, perhaps, L'Or des Mers: the sea by which these people are obliged to live, and by which they are punished. Unlike the Flaherty of Man of Aran, Epstein does not describe exceptional circumstances, but a people whom he watched living day by day, his eyes opened wide by love. Sometimes, unconsciously, one licks one's lips, astonished not to find the taste of salt on them.

Epstein's films are slow; when their narrative finally reaches its end, it seems to be because life has brought it there. He is never chary of lingering over a detail—on the contrary, his stories are often composed only of details, integrated into a complete fresco. He will dwell on the limbs, the walk of a character if the motion fascinates him, on shrivelled hands, a handkerchief being dropped, a single face. He will contemplate a pool of water with the rain driving into it (L'Auberge Rouge), a face reflected in a tarnished mirror (Coeur Fidèle), a bleeding hand (Finis Terrae), faces that exchange long and slow glances, an Ile de France landscape: or, simply, the sea whose last secret he seems determined to prise out.

His characters are never in a hurry. They live their daily lives under our eyes, performing the innumerable everyday acts and gestures that make up their "plot"; but one doesn't for a moment long for the feverish rhythm of most of today's films, in which nothing is allowed unless it advances the action; the montage of Epstein's films gives them a rhythm which is like the rhythm of breathing.

The term "magician of the screen" has been used and abused. Jean Epstein is one of the few who perhaps deserve it. The little girl in love in Coeur Fidèle, and her crippled friend, Lady Usher, the Breton fishermen and their families, the passionate poetic images of men and nature, these will live with the breath of love that Jean Epstein gave them.