Coeur fidèle

Coeur Fidèle, a forgotten movie today, is very representative of the best that European cinema had to offer at the beginning of the 20th century. The formal beauty of the images in this picture have rarely been matched in the whole history of cinema. Some scenes of this movie, like the one of the fair, with the girl riding wood horses with her kidnapper is very audacious, there for instance Epstein uses very effectively the pace and juxtaposition of the images to depict the intensity of her emotions.

The audacity of Epstein, very influenced by cubism and surrealism, takes us from a very banal story to a breathtaking intellectual adventure.

One great benefit of watching many films is experiencing them conversing with each other. Some anticipate others, some quibble, some steal, inspire, annotate. Epstein's "Coeur fidèle" (1923) enriches one of my favourite films, Vigo's "L'Atalante" (1934), which in turn enriches Epstein's film tremendously. Both move in a dreamlike world of incessant flowing of breathtaking images that are able to fill whole movies with their individual stories. Both see love in highly cinematic terms, something which I've most recently encountered in Wong's "Fa yeung nin wa" (2000) and Malick's "The New World" (2005). I also find some Epstein in Kaurismäki, as well.

There are so many unique moments of delight it's impossible to list them all. The first few minutes of exposition are masterful in how they paint the atmosphere, the characters, the visual mood of the film in so short a time. Characters sift out of focus and into focus again, Epstein's eye catches an object, a moment not directly pertaining to what's happening but where it's happening and how. The impression is so strong I'm not going to get this out of my head for a long time. And I don't want to.

The film has been released on Blu-ray (Region B) by the Masters of Cinema series, whose transfer is breathtaking.

"Coeur Fidèle" is a very simple story:Marie 's in love with Jean,but she is forced to marry Petit Paul,who,in spite of his name ,is an alcoholic brute.

Epstein's script was probably inspired by the novelists from the nineteenth century,probably Victor Hugo and Emile Zola.Marie is nobody's child:she was brought up by a shrew and her husband who never showed some affection to her:she is akin to Cosette or Fantine in "les Miserables ".Petit Paul seems to come from Zola's "L'Assommoir" the seventh volume in the Rougon-Macquart saga.

Marie and Jean are unfortunate lovers ;Jean is a good man,in the noblest

sense of the word .Epstein's closest relative in the cinema field is Frank Borzage in "Coeur Fidele",with whom he shares the same fascination for the fair and the merry-go-rounds (see "little man what now?") Like Abel Gance ,Epstein was a pioneer: the scene on the fairground has a sense of madness which makes the viewer dizzy ;it predates Hitchcock's experimentations in "Strangers on a train" by thirty years.For that scene alone,the movie would be essential viewing;with the addition of another extraordinary scene when the crippled girl,whose crutch has been crushed by a car crawls all along the way to save her friends,it becomes a major twenties French classic.

Who, even among the proudest of film geeks, even knows the name, Jean Epstein, in today's world of comic book hero movie franchises and the indiscriminate remaking of films that were perfect to begin with, e.g. Psycho, The Ladykillers, etc., And even-in the case of Halloween-Correct me if I'm wrong, a Third remake, and yes, I'm gonna go there the FOURTH REMAKE OF A STAR IS BORN!-ENOUGH! I, admittedly, fairly recently, discovered the genius of Jean Epstein-after finally discovering silent Genius, Abel Gance-And Thanks to God or whatever, I discovered a whole World of artistic genius within the silent era, that I am truly grateful for stumbling into....Coeur Fidele is a brilliant work of uncompromising artistic integrity...Go on, give it a shot -you just may discover something about Artistic Expression you didn't even know exists. . . . -todd gold

This is a masterpiece, I repeat, this is a masterpiece!! I was studying for my cinema exam and this one right away caught me. It's clear that the aesthetic aspect and camera work (and the editing) are the centre of it all but the plot and its structure must not come second. It's a genre that has as its main goal the subtle representation of the characters' psyche, more than the plot itself. The performances were absolutely amazing, especially by the protagonist in the role of Marie. Even though it was not the goal all I see is a powerful strong feminine character that even though she doesn't go through a proper arc I could feel on my skin what she was feeling and thinking all the time, also thanks to her subtle and intense performance. If this film came out today I'd probably give her all the awards on this Earth. I loved it so much.