The Three-Sided Mirror
(1927)
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The Three-Sided Mirror
(1927)
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Jeanne Helbling | ... |
Lucie
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Suzy Pierson | ... |
Athalia
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Olga Day | ... |
Pearl
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Raymond Guérin-Catelain | ... |
Le Soupirant
(as Raymond Guerin)
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Jean Garat | ... |
(as Paul Garat)
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René Ferté | ... |
L'Homme
(as Rene Ferte)
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Psychological narrative avantgarde 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: rather than living up to his dates he takes his sports-car from an ultra-modern garage and speeds to the fashionable beaches of Deauville. On his way, he is fatally hit by a descending swallow. The film is divided into three segments each of which consists of events the woman experienced. These sequences are embedded in scenes in which each of the three women is telling and casting her mind back to her own love affair. Thus, present, future and past merge and cannot be distinguished clearly. The intertwinement of several layers of time experience, recollection, telling and showing have been regarded as a source of inspiration of Alain Resnais and this film prefigures his "L'Année ... Written by Hans Winter <hwinter@xs4all.nl>
"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