SOURCE: "The Impressionist Avant-Garde," in The Cinematic Muse: Critical Studies in the History of French Cinema, University of Missouri Press, 1979, pp. 16-23.

In the following essay, Thiher acknowledges Epstein 's work as a significant precursor of the cinematic avantgarde movement.

It is surprising today to recall that French film producers once dominated the world film market; but this was during the period of primitive films before World War I. For the film historian it is a fascinating period. The diversity of these films is quite amazing, and they exercise an attraction on us that is undoubtedly out of proportion to their artistic worth (though Méliès, Durand, Feuillade, and others have their cults). As far as their influence on the elaboration of film discourse in France is concerned, they seem to belong to a remote epoch that has little in common with the silent films of the...