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252:(1923). Epstein now chose to film a simple story of love and violence "to win the confidence of those, still so numerous, who believe that only the lowest melodrama can interest the public", and also in the hope of creating "a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy". He wrote the scenario in a single night.
234:, credited as "Mlle Marice"), who lives next door; but Petit Paul, warned by gossiping neighbours that Jean is seeing Marie, returns for a violent confrontation, this time armed with a gun. In the ensuing struggle, the crippled woman obtains the gun and kills Petit Paul. In an epilogue, we see Jean and Marie finally free to love each other, though their faces suggest that experience has taken its toll on their lives.
230:), a dockworker. Marie is forced to leave with Petit Paul, but Jean follows them to a fairground where the two men fight. In the brawl a policeman is stabbed and, while Petit Paul escapes, Jean is arrested and gaoled. A year later, Jean rediscovers Marie, now with a sick baby and living with Petit Paul, who spends all their money on drink. Jean tries to support Marie, aided by a crippled woman (
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intercut and overlaid to convey her relationship with Jean. The film's most celebrated sequence, set at a fairground, employs rhythmic editing to chart the escalating tension of the love triangle. In the film's second half, Epstein employs dramatic lighting effects and lens distortion effects to convey the melodrama of the situation, as well as subjective states, such as Petit Paul's drinking.
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he similarly applied rhythmic editing, overlays, close-ups, and point-of-view shots. The opening sequence establishes Marie's situation in the harbour bar through montage: we see close-up images of her face, hands, and the table and glasses she is cleaning. Later, images of the sea and the port are
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The film was not a success with the public. Its initial run in Paris in 1923 was terminated after three days (because of disputes among the audience). A re-release in the following year saw a steady decline in the size of its audience. Among critics and other film-makers however
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The film's technical experiments are balanced throughout by the realism of the setting. The characters are unglamorous and belong to a working-class milieu, living in cheap lodgings, frequenting rough bar-rooms.
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Jean
Epstein had already established himself as a film theorist with the publication of several books, and he had begun to explore his ideas in practice with his first two films,
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must be seen if you want to understand the resources of the cinema today. ...For a film to be worthy of the cinema, that's already a very welcome miracle!
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