Closing session: La Montagne infidèle
La Montagne infidèle was the missing piece of the work of Jean Epstein. At 26 years of age and at the start of his career, Epstein shot this documentary on the eruption of Mount Etna in June 1923. Shot between Coeur fidèle and La Belle nivernaise, both in the same year and with Paul Guichard as cinematographer, La Montagne infidèle reflects the interest in real locations that would dominate his filmography from the 1930s onwards, and which adopts the form of cataclysm and the extraordinary here. The mythical aura around the film not only comes from its theme and the conditions under which it was shot, but also from the essays written by Epstein. His second book on cinema was titled Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna (1926), and its theoretical reflection seems to emerge from his extreme experience of the volcano.
In 2021 the heirs of Pere Tresserra set up a repository in Filmoteca de Catalunya of a collection of Pathé-KOK films, a 28 mm system for an educational and family film circuit. Thanks to the work of 2CR (The Centre of Conservation and Restoration of Filmoteca de Catalunya) this copy of La Montagne infidèle was identified in the collection and work started on its restoration. So, we now can finally show what the filmmaker saw on Mount Etna.
Daniel Pitarch and Rosa Cardona
La Montagne infidèle
Jean Epstein
France, 1923, 24 min, 28 mm to DCP, silent with intertitles in Spanish
Screening with live music by IbonRG
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