Jean Epstein's ideas about rhythm, expressed in a series of talks, articles, and books from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, cannot be fully understood without being situated within a larger theoretical debate over the aesthetic and social potential of the cinematic medium. Already discussed at the beginning of the 20th century as a key concept in many artistic and scientific fields, the notion of rhythm occupies a central position among the early attempts by French critics and cinéastes to grasp the so-called “specific langage” of film. I would like to emphasize a historical-contextual approach, according to which “French film theory” does not amount to a coherent discourse, but instead gathers together a set of conflicting views on similar issues and problems. In the 1920s, rhythm clearly stood out as one of the central conceptions within these theoretical debates over ways to define and to legitimize cinema as an art form. I will start by examining two well-known notions that are closely related to rhythm in Jean Epstein's film aesthetics: movement and photogénie. Studying the connections between movement and photogénie will foreground the rhythmic properties that early commentators and theorists observed in film. More importantly, these connections will help define Epstein's thoughts about cinematic rhythm, which lay at the intersection between art and science, and refer as much to a recognition of modernity's most revolutionary aspects as to the persistence of traditional philosophical ideas and values.

Movement is a recurring preoccupation among critics and cinéastes writing about the aesthetics of film during the twenties. At the time, critics frequently asserted that cinema epitomized a new kind of mobility, resulting broadly from the major changes brought about in everyday life by the new techniques and practices associated with industrialization. According to many French film critics of the twenties, movement characterized not only concrete and daily existence, but also the aesthetic experience itself. Moreover, the plastic arts were considered primarily a static means of expression, from which cinema should absolutely differ. As the art historian Elie Faure puts it in 1920, only film gives “new plastic impressions” from “a mobile composition, constantly renewed.” One year later, in his book Bonjour Cinema, Jean Epstein follows Faure in describing film as “all movement, without any obligation to be stable or balanced.”