Six et demi, onze (1927)
Directed by Jean Epstein

Film Review

Six et demi, onze marks a definite progression in Jean Epstein's career as a film auteur, the first in a trio of avant-garde masterpieces - followed by La Glace à trois faces (1927) and La Chute de la maison Usher (1928) - that sit between his early commercial films and subsequent Breton cinematic poems.  The success of the period melodrama Mauprat (1926), the first film that Epstein made for his fledgling film production company, gave him financial as well as artistic freedom, which would endure just long enough (barely two years) for the director to master his craft and fulfil his potential as possibly the most gifted filmmaker of his generation.  Freed of the constraints of commercial cinema which had always hampered his creativity, Epstein was able to experiment with all aspects of a film's construction (editing as well as mise-en-scène and shot composition) whilst developing his radical theories about cinematic expression.

Scripted by the director's sister Marie (a collaborator on many of his films), Six et demi, onze bears some similarity with Epstein's previous contemporary melodrama Le Double amour (1925).  This is most apparent in the film's two-part structure, with the romance of the second part ironically mirroring that of the first.  The film's alluring femme fatale (Suzy Pierson in her first notable screen role) assumes a double identity - as Marie she drives one man to kill himself, as Mary she falls in love (more through a morbid perversion than genuine passion) with his brother.  The first names of both male protagonists begin with the letter J, which is interestingly the director's own first initial.  The double motif is repeated throughout the film, through the presence of mirrors in virtually every scene and Pierre Kefer's Deco-influenced set design, whose spatial symmetry reflects that of the narrative.  In the house in which Jérôme and Jean live, everything is arranged in pairs, emphasising the strong bond between the two brothers whilst anticipating (via Jean's absence, which is felt more strongly than his presence) the cruel separation that is to come.

Epstein's obsessive double dealing lends an intensely felt poignancy to the scene in which Jean commits suicide.  Before turning the gun on himself, the heartbroken young man fires a bullet at a mirror to destroy his reflection - to die once is not enough, he must first obliterate his mirror image and all the illusions that go with it.  The film even has a double ending, although this was not Epstein's intention.  Dissatisfied with the original ending, the film's distributors coerced its director into making a few minor alterations to render it slightly less depressing.  Epstein's first cut of the film ended with Mary resuming her singing career, but she is so emotionally scarred by her double heartbreak that she can only perform for charitable causes.  In the revised ending, Mary has managed to put the past behind her and resumes her career, taking special pleasure in her charity recitals. (For the recent restoration of the film by the Cinémathèque française, both endings were preserved and can be seen on a recent DVD release by Potemkine.)

Originally, the film was to be titled Un Kodak, although Epstein changed this to the more enigmatic Six et demi, onze (named after a format of film negative) to make the denouement less obvious.  The camera isn't just a crucial plot device - the trigger for Jean and Marie's separation and the thing that ultimately destroys Jérôme's love for Mary - it becomes central to Epstein's conception of the whole film.  Indeed, so important is the camera that it is mentioned in the opening credits, above the name of the lead actress - 'L'Objectif, Le Soleil et Suzy Pierson'.  As soon as the fateful camera enters the frame (accompanied by an advertising slogan that turns out to be bitterly ironic) we know it will be an engine of destruction.  Marie's dismay when Jean starts playing with his new toy is readily apparent and barely a minute has passed before she is sizing up her next suitor.

To record an image on the film, the camera needs strong sunlight, but this is the very thing that Marie is allergic to.  It is strong light that causes Marie to flee from Jean when he insists on taking a photograph of her, and it is strong light that prevents Marie from reaching Jérôme (in a sequence that appears almost surreal) just as he makes his fatal discovery.  As Jean dies from his self-imposed gunshot wound, the image of the camera swells to fill the screen, before fading away as Jean too melts into oblivion.  In the latter part of the film, the cursed camera becomes a ticking time bomb.  Epstein ekes out the suspense for as long as he can (providing a model for Hitchcock) before the treacherous photograph is revealed, sealing the fate of both Mary and Jérôme.
 
For the technophilic Epstein, the camera was much more than just a gadget for taking pictures, it represented an important milestone in mankind's evolution - a machine that would extend his perception of reality and radically alter his conception of the world.  Here is an instrument that can preserve memories for ever, recording instants as they fly past with perfect accuracy, far superior to the flawed and biased recollection of the human mind.  The film camera offers even greater possibilities, allowing us not only to actually see the passage of time but also giving us a way to play with the illusion of time, to stretch and bend it for our own amusement.  Throughout Six et demi, onze, Epstein exploits both the static image and the moving image for dramatic effect, revealing the psychological states of his protagonists via his two trademark devices: superimposition and rhythmic editing.

Superimposition was a technique that had been pioneered by Georges Méliès right at the dawn of cinema and was taken up as an essential trope of the impressionistic set of the 1920s, who included Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier and Jean Epstein.  One of the most striking scenes in Six et demi, onze is the one in which Jean and Marie are seen driving at full pelt down a coastal road towards their 'Palace of Love', their state of amorous intoxication conveyed by the sheer exuberance of the photography and editing.  The sense of elation is heightened further when this image is combined with a dramatic shot of waves smashing against the coast - it is as if the car has suddenly become a boat, blithely ploughing its way across the surface of the sea.  Another shot of the lovers in a tender embrace is similarly superimposed on a raw seascape, in a way that eerily presages Epstein's subsequent Breton films where the spirits of man and nature become indelibly intertwined.

Gance's editing techniques, so brilliantly employed on his epic melodrama La Roue (1923), greatly influenced Epstein and inspired two other memorable sequences in Six et demi, onze.  In the first, Jean's attempt to chase after Marie after she has deserted him is thwarted by a punctured tyre.  Shots of him hurriedly replacing the tyre are aggressively intercut with those depicting Marie fleeing in a sports car with her new lover.  The latter shots are distorted to give the impression this is what it is in Jean's head, heightening his sense of desperation and loss.  This sequence is echoed near the end of the film with one constructed from alternating shots of a train (transporting Jérôme to the place of his brother's death) and Mary performing a dance (against her will) on stage.  The smart editing combines the two incongruous series of shots into a seamless whole, building the tension to an unbearable pitch ahead of the tragic denouement that must surely follow once Jérôme has reached his destination.

Six et demi, onze is, both technically and artistically, one of Jean Epstein's finest achievements, although being a melodrama with some fairly predictable twists and turns it tends to be overshadowed by the director's subsequent films which offer far more originality on the narrative front.  With its grimly authentic depiction of three characters whose lives are ruined by uncontrollable passions and cruel circumstances, it offers a foretaste of poetic realism, but by the time Carné, Duvivier and others had boarded that particular band wagon Epstein had already moved on to pastures new - to capture the soul of his beloved Brittany.

Film Synopsis

Jérôme de Ners is a renowned doctor who lives with his younger brother Jean after their parents' death.  Recently, Jérôme has been aware of his brother's agitation and is concerned when, one day, he suddenly disappears without leaving a clue as to his whereabouts.  Under an assumed name, Jean rents a splendid house in the south of France where he embarks on an idyllic affair with the one true love of his life, Marie.  For a while, the couple are blissfully happy but Jean's purchase of a camera inexplicably disconcerts his lover and a rift develops between the two.  The estrangement is completed when Marie falls for a handsome young dancer, Harry Gold, and is tempted to resume her former career on the stage.  When Marie deserts him without a word, Jean succumbs to a depression that leads him to commit suicide.  Unaware of the fate that has befallen his brother but still anxious over his disappearance, Jérôme begins an affair with the popular singer Mary Winter, not realising that she is in fact Jean's former mistress.  Alerted to his brother's suicide, Jérôme returns to the place where he ended his life and sifts through his belongings.  Among these is Jean's treasured camera and a final letter to those he left behind.  On impulse, Mary follows Jérôme and is reassured when he tells her he does not know the identity of the woman who drove his brother to suicide.  Then she remembers the photograph that Jean took of her before she left him - still in the camera, waiting to be developed...