One of the most prolific filmmakers from the 1920s through the ’40s, Jean Epstein is renowned for his critical writings on film, his avant-garde narrative work and his quasi-documentary explorations of rural life in coastal Brittany. His sister Marie, who collaborated with him on a number of scripts and also directed her own films, is much less well-known. Here we pair one of Jean’s films, The Three-Paneled Mirror (La Glace à Trois Faces), a tale of a spoiled young man as seen through the very different visions of his three lovers, with one of Marie’s: Children of Montmartre (La Maternelle) is a poetic-realist social drama of children in Paris’ urban ghetto, based on months of research and cast mostly with amateurs. (Irina Leimbacher)
![](https://www.sfcinematheque.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/041003_epstein-jean_the_three-paneled_mirror_1.jpg)
Thursday, April 10, 2003
French Narratives of the 1920s and ’30s
Program 2: Jean Epstein's The Three-Paneled Mirror and Marie Epstein's Children of Montmartre
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts