Actually, the plot summary above is a little misleading. We know nothing at all about the man except what the women say, so the actual motives for his departure are not known- he gives different reasons to each of them. The letter claiming unworthiness and the attribution of cowardice is the Russian version; the Englishwoman claims that he is dominant and has immense power of will and we see him dominating her and others. Symbolically perhaps (Morand who wrote the story was a French nationalist) the letter to the French peasant girl gives a possibility of his return. Nor- given that the stories are recounted in hindsight- do we know whether he conducted the affairs in succession or at once. Finally there is the end, when we are told that an "I"- the narrator/film-maker heard the stories from the women. With Pearl- the Englishwoman- and Athalie- the sculptor- we see them talking to father figures about their lover. In each case, the father figure is a different man, so there is yet another layer of doubt here. The plot, of course, is irrelevant except as an excuse for virtuoso technique and there it serves perfectly. What we have here is an exercise in silent film-making and narrative technique at the pinnacle of its achievement. As well as the possible connection with Resnais, I wonder if this film- or the book- inspired an aspect of Tavernier's La Vie et Rien de Plus. Both of the leading women in that film were married or engaged to the same man without knowing it- a definite echo of this plot.
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allenrogerj19 April 2006
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FerdinandVonGalitzien3 February 2012"La Glace À Trois Faces" ( The Three-Sided Mirror ) (1927) demonstrates the experimental aspect of Herr Jean Epstein's silent period. It is full of bold and innovative editing and unusual film narrative. Epstein was certainly not the only director to tell a story from the viewpoints of different characters but he makes the concept visually exciting. In this film there are three different women: a sophisticated lady, Frau Pearl (Frau Olga Day), a dilettante sculptress, Frau Athalia Roubinowitch (Frau Suzy Pierson) and a commoner girl, Frau Lucie (Frau Jeanne Helbling). They each tell of their love affair with the same man (Herr Rene Ferte).
The film is divided into three episodes, each very stylized. The object of the affections of these three ladies is a young businessman who is indifferent to the despair his heartlessness causes each of his lovers. He ends each affair abruptly and with simple excuses, rushing off in his racing car.
Visually powerful, "La Glace Á Trois Faces" carefully depicts each setting and the editing is frenzied and brilliant in the outdoor sequences (especially when the man flees from his lovers). There are suggestive and subtle consecutive close-ups which depict the troubled relationship of the three women and their nonchalant lover. There's also a bit of classicism in this very original film.
"La Glace À Trois Faces" is an exercise in film style, a unique work that certainly will leave no one indifferent and will especially delight audiences that appreciate original film experimentation.
And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must ride at full gallop from his boring responsibilities.
Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com -
Polaris_DiB21 February 2008By 1927, pretty much all of the formal techniques Epstein used in this production had already been used time and time again in experimental cinema: fast cuts, double-exposures, alternate time-shots like slow and sped-up film, etc. A key focus at this point, however, is how those technological motifs serve to tell a story--a major interest in avant-garde cinema is not just making non-narrative structures, but finding alternative ways than the classic modes that hard already been created and given larger precedence in mainstream cinema.
In "La Glace a trois faces", Epstein tells the tale of a man who courts three different women at once, only to dump all of them and, in a moment of careless thrill-seeking, meets an untimely demise. The key process in this narrative is the way that Epstein characterizes the separate figures through different uses of editing: the first woman is prone to dizzying flights of fancy, drunkenness, and lack of focus; the second woman, a sculptor, literally builds her narrative out of back-and-forth cuts; the third woman, a more innocent and pure type, slowly and patiently unveils her story. Meanwhile, the three stories create a build-up in tension to the penultimate moment, an exciting ending where the narrative unravels into fast-paced cutting, sped-up photography, dizziness, acceleration, and then demise.
These types of effects are not so unrecognizable or alternative today--they pretty much characterize any stylized movie. But they do show how non-realist forms can create exciting and engaging ways to tell stories and build suspense. Furthermore, Epstein is a very poetic storyteller who builds a lot of sentiment through beautiful imagery, and in this case, the screen literally glows with the faces of the various lovers and the man--sometimes even demoniacally, like at one point when the man's eyes are hidden behind two sharp pin-points of light.
--PolarisDiB -
chaos-rampant13 August 2011Stories within stories, fictions passing as real, mysterious life as this overlap of fictions recounted by some disembodied narrator; so much that is great in film, especially French film, has come from these notions. It has always been about dislocating us from the safely entrenched world of reason and knowledge, placing us on the other side of the mirror so that the apparent causalities that we understand as real are inverted, thus reflected, in the mind.
So the dreamy, oblique narratives make sense - they transport inside the imaginative mind weaving the stories. This is an early example of this kind of film, perhaps thin in the individual pieces, but worthy of time.
So, we have three stories, about three women loving the same man who doesn't reciprocate. None of them safely real, concrete, but vagueries shaped by a collective time and memory. Recounted by the women to characters on-screen, by the narrator to us. The subjective camera that ripples through the screen, now crossfading, now superimposing, is neither ours nor theirs then, it is not a surreal device, but rather attached to that very dislocation intrinsic in the act of narrating.
There is an bevy of then avantgarde technique used in this, which we now have termed as impressionist, a few individual shots from inside a moving car that are pretty astounding, but it's certainly no Menilmontant in the grand scheme.
The rest is in the finale. Oh, we see the man, the cruel puppetmaster toying with romantically wistful beings meet an inscrutable fate. But it seems like the wish-fulfillment, thus magical fantasy, of the wronged, possibly vengeful women. It is rendered with some imagery of dizzying motion that you should experience if you're looking for great images from the silent era. What really matters though is the final shot; the man disappearing in the mirror of fictions, whence everything has sprang from.
It's not an entirely successful project overall. Perhaps because each of the individual vignettes is its own simple world and they don't coalesce to form some meaningful pattern. But you can see how Resnais - where great French cinema is later revitalized - might have been influenced. -
gavin69426 January 2017Psychological narrative avant-garde film about a wealthy young businessman who consecutively falls in love with a classy English woman (Pearl), a Russian sculptress (Athalia), and a naive working-class girl (Lucie). Overpowered by weakness, the coward sidesteps the obligations that love affairs impose.
Although the French-accented English narration helps the plot move along, it does not make up for the fact that this is a rather bland film. It is not one of the more interesting or experimental "avant garde" films, and if someone wanted to skip any movie in Kino's box set, I suppose this would be the one to skip. -
Hitchcoc15 August 2020Other reviewers are much more skilled than I. I am so impressed with their knowledge of film history. I chanced upon this film, which I put on a futures list several years ago. I was only able to find it in French so the few dialogue boxes were of little use to me (although I pieced a few words together). Here we have a psychological study of a young man who moves from woman to woman. He falls then bolts. There are some interesting cuts and some cinematic tricks here. There is little if any story, but it does captivate one eventually. The man is damaged and self destructive. Someone mentioned Resnais. I agree.
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claudecat3 July 2006I saw this short on a Kino DVD compilation ("Avant-garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s and 30s"), which contained glowing reviews claiming it was one of the best experimental films ever made. Unfortunately, the movie didn't really work for me, because I could never feel involved with any of the characters, and the imagery didn't interest me enough to make up for it. Perhaps I just don't know enough about the development of film to appreciate this one's originality? I was much more impressed by some of the other shorts on the same DVD, such as "Ménilmontant" and "La Coquille et Le Clergyman". I do remember a few minor moments in "La Glace" that I liked, but they were brief. Generally, I thought that the story was too underwritten, and the way the actors were made-up and shot only increased the distance I felt from them. The fact that the protagonist seemed like kind of a jerk didn't really help. The ending (which I won't reveal) has been particularly celebrated, but since its power depends on the viewer's feelings about the hero, it didn't mean much to me. (It also seemed dependent on an inexplicable action by a passing bird--someone please explain to me if I misunderstood that part.)
Students of editing might find more to like in this film than I did.