Le Tempestaire (1947)
Directed by Jean Epstein

Film Review

For Jean Epstein, one of the avant-garde giants of the silent era, the birth of cinema was as significant a milestone in man's cultural development as Einstein's Theory of Relativity, both being landmark events that would forever change our relationship with time.  The cinematograph was the first device that man had created which allows us to 'see' time, or rather 'observe' the passage of time through a succession of events, which once recorded on film, can be played back again and again.  Time is no longer a vague abstract concept, it is something we can directly interact with.  What a curious coincidence that H.G. Wells's The Time Machine was first published in the same year that the Lumière brothers unveiled their famous cinematograph.

Epstein was not slow to realise the artistic possibilities of 'manipulating' time through cinema.  By undercranking or overcranking the film camera, time could be made to appear to slow down or speed up when images are projected, at normal speed, onto a screen.  Time could even be sent backwards, just by reversing the film.  Such temporal distortion became an integral part of Epstein's impressionistic approach to cinema, a means by which the psychological states of the characters in his films could be revealed - a way of permitting us to see into their soul.

Le Tempestaire translates as 'Storm Tamer', someone who has the power to calm the elements (tides, storms, winds, rain), but it could equally apply to Epstein himself, the cinémagicien who, through his temporal manipulations, controls everything within his realm of cinematic illusion, a realm that links the visible world of sensory perception with the hidden world of the imagination.  In his penultimate film, Epstein revels in his power as a filmmaker and the result is his most beguiling and mysterious work.  Inspired by an old Breton legend and set in the director's adopted homeland of Brittany, Le Tempestaire is a captivating poem on the sea that is both an avant-garde masterpiece and a haunting evocation of man's complex relationship with the natural world.

This is a film that Epstein had wanted to make for over a decade, but events conspired to thwart this ambition.  For the duration of the Occupation, he was prohibited from making films on account of his Jewish origins, and after the war he had difficulty finding a producer willing to back such an unusual (and most probably unprofitable) film.  It was Nino Constantini, an actor who appeared in a number of his silent films of the 1920s (including Mauprat), who came to his aid in 1946.  Having recently founded his own film production company Film-Magazine, Constantini gave Epstein free rein to make the experimental short that was to be his most remarkable film of the sound era.

The most groundbreaking aspect of Le Tempestaire is Epstein's experimentation with sound.  The aural landscape that the film offers is as vivid and uncannily lyrical as the images, comprising a subtly expressive score by Yves Baudrier and an old Breton song, perfectly wedded with natural sounds, the latter treated (speeded up or slowed down, in parallel with the pictures) to create a truly eerie effect.  When the human protagonists speak, it is in a way that is oddly lacking in urgency and emotion but fits with the rhythm of the film as a whole.  Sound is an integral part of Le Tempestaire and contributes as much to the film's indefinable poetry as what we see on the screen.  The raw Breton setting would have been a characterless desert without the incessant murmuring of the winds.  The seas would have been robbed of their potency had the roar of the waves been stifled. Sound is what brings Nature to life and makes it the dominant protagonist in Epstein's film, reducing the humans to feeble victims of its heartless caprice.

Right from the start of the film, Nature appears to be in command, a living entity with a will of its own and a temper to match.  The credits are played over erratic tracking shots of a wild seascape in which the camera appears to be buffeted like a kite in the wind.  Then there is an unearthly stillness, as if time has suddenly stopped.  One storm has passed, another is imminent.  The human protagonists, frozen like statues, suddenly come to life and the story begins.  As it does so, a feeling of expectancy slowly spreads over us. How easily do we identify with the woman who fears for the life of her fiancé as he prepares to go off to sea.  Outside the woman's shack we see that a storm is brewing.  Gradually, almost imperceptibly, nature's calm is turning to fury.  It is at times such as this that we feel impelled to turn to magic and legend to keep us from harm.  The Storm Tamer will protect us.

The meeting of the young woman and the ancient Storm Tamer is one of the most unsettling in Epstein's oeuvre.  The shots of the woman appear to be very slightly slowed down whilst those of her age-worn redeemer are played at normal speed, creating a strange, almost mystical disconnection between the two characters.  They inhabit the same physical space but their psychological worlds are lightyears apart.  What we observe is a kind of contest, a test of the woman's faith, and in the end her faith triumphs.  The old man yields one last time and through his mysterious art Nature is calmed.  As if by magic, the woman's fiancé suddenly appears and the Storm Tamer's dark crystal ball shatters into a thousand pieces.  This being Epstein's last film but one, it is tempting to read a deeper significance into this ending.  The fracturing of the crystal ball reminds us of Prospero breaking his staff at the end of Shakespeare's The Tempest.  Can it be that Epstein, having attained the pinacle of his art and conscious of his own mortality, must now abjure the sorcery he has toyed with for a quarter of a century?  Like the old man in the film, he seems bound to let the magic slip from his fingers and seek out a new master...

Film Synopsis

On a small island off the coast of Brittany, a young woman and her grandmother are sitting at a spinning wheel when the door to their cottage suddenly opens of its own accord.  Taking this as a bad omen, the woman becomes concerned for the safety of her fiancé, a sardine fisherman who is about to set out to sea.  As a violent sea storm breaks, the grandmother recalls that in times past the winds could be tamed by old men known as 'storm masters'.  Fearing that her fiancé's life is in danger, the young woman visits the nearby lighthouse, hoping to learn the whereabouts of a storm master.  She is directed to an old man who once practiced this mysterious art, but he insists that his storm taming days are over...