Coeur Fidèle (1923)

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Coeur Fidèle (1923) – J. Epstein

It’s like watching the language of cinema being invented sometimes – except that some of the lyrical moves of these early silent films seem to have been lost to the ages in this era of CGI action films.  And “The Faithful Heart” is as far from an action movie as you can probably get, although perhaps the bare bones melodrama plot has made it into a fair few action movies (boy falls in love with girl who is taken away by different bad boy until she is rescued/released by the original boy).  Here instead, we have a gauzy romantic look at yearning, full of giant close-up heads, sometimes superimposed onto images of the vast ocean (as the film takes place at the docks).  Equally impressive is a sequence at the funfair featuring dizzying rhythmic cutting that bespeaks an impressionistic vision of the heroine’s alarm.  All told, director Jean Epstein herein demonstrates a mastery of the medium that is beautiful to look at, even as the plot feels like simply a shell to hold his ideas.  But oh what ideas!