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THE ACTUAL
for French graphic art in its proper surroundings. The creation of the artificial environment, especally when inclined to become sentimental in the French film as compared with the expressionist and fauvist character of the early German pictures, is hostile to the proper aim of the cinema, which is primarily concerned with the representation of reality. In the French film, as in the German, this environment may at first sight be taken for a degree of fantasy. Actually, however, it is nothing of the sort. It is the syrup of sentimentality, destructive to the force fulness of purpose of the cinema. It was seen at its worst and most decadent in the fairyland settings of Clair's Le Voyage Imaginaire and in Renoir's La Petite Marchande d Allumettes, where it was strongly reminiscent of the Russian ballet and the decorations of the Chauve-Souris. Moreover, beyond setting, it spreads into spiritual themes until there is found the ' Spirit of France ' in Napoleon, with its fluttering eagle, the ' Rose of the Rail ' in La Roue and in Poirier's vision d'hisloire, Verdun. It is a type of poetic symbolism, essentially nineteenth century in feeling, of spiritual sentimentality that is uncongenial to the architectural, contemporary essence of the cinema.
Of the present directors in France it has been said that the most significant are Jean Epstein, Rene Clair, Abel Gance, Carl Dreyer (a Dane who has recently worked in France with French material) and Jacques Feyder (a Belgian, who has directed in Germany and who is now in Hollywood).1 The first two of these have developed from the avant-garde movement.
Epstein, who is of Polish origin, is characterised by his philosophy of outlook and his essentially cinematic mind, which has recently been influenced by the constructivism of the Soviet cinema. Amongst his early experimental work, usually conceived with a sense of mysticism and expressed by a variety of trick camerawork, mention may be made of Mauprat, Le Cceur Fidele, L'Affiche, La Glace a Trois Faces, and Six et Demi x Onze. It was with his version of 1 Died, Lausanne, 1948,
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