Le Tempestaire (1947, Jean Epstein)

The Tempest // Le Tempestaire This movie has a direct relationship to Man of Aran for it’s poetic use of the swirling, pounding, shifting, lucid movements of the sea against the coast, and the human relationship with such a dynamic. Whereas Flaherty's proto-documentary is a celebration of the heroic human against chaos, Epstein's 1947 short is more of a mystical meditation on provincial life. A young woman fears for her boyfriend as he decides to sail out right before a big storm. Despite everyone's efforts to calm her down, she feels ominous about the whole thing and refuses to let go of her anxiety. As the seas rise and the wind howls, she eventually searches for help from the "Tempestaire" (Tempest-tamer) who settles the sea and (instantaneously) brings the boyfriend home. Epstein is rather famous for his avant-garde sensibilities in cinema, and Le Tempestaire shows his supreme talent for building emotion, mood, and tone directly from imagery. This film is somewhat important to his oeuvre because it shows his ability to play with sound, especially in an at-the-time experimental way with fades of noises and a song sung over images of the sea rising. Director: Jean Epstein www.imdb.com

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 22m 41s Date Found: Mon, Dec 20 2010 8:02 AM Category: Entertainment Date Produced: Sun, Dec 19 2010 9:18 PM View Count: 0