words vs image

"The cinema must seek to become, gradually and in the end uniquely, cinematic; to employ, in other words, only photogenic elements."

Jean Epstein, On Certain Characteristics of Photogenie, 1924.

"The cinema is true; a story is false."

Jean Epstein, The Senses I (b), 1921

"Visual impact is ephemeral, it's an impression you receive and which suggests a thousand thoughts....

"The seventh art, that of the screen, is depth rendered perceptible, the depth that lies beneath that surface; it is the musical ungraspable....

"The more we get rid of the plot to go in the direction of visual cinema, the more we will work for the seventh art."

Germaine Dulac, Visual and Anti-visual Films, 1928.

Now, isn't looking at an image in this context just as interesting as contemplating what John Ford was supposed to do with a Shirley Temple picture? (which I enjoyed very much, by the way.)

Wee Willie Winkie (1937)
directed by John Ford
cinematography by Arthur C. Miller