Cœur fidèle is a 1923 French drama film directed by Jean Epstein. It has the alternative English title Faithful Heart. The film tells a melodramatic story of thwarted romance, set against a background of the Marseille docks, and experiments with many techniques of camerawork and editing. Plot Marie (Gina Manès) was an orphan adopted by a bar-owner and his wife in the port of Marseille, and now she is harshly exploited by them as a servant in the bar. She is desired by Petit Paul (Edmond van Daële), a thuggish layabout, but is secretly in love with Jean (Léon Mathot), a dockworker. Marie is forced to leave with Petit Paul, but Jean follows them to a fairground where the two men fight. In the brawl a policeman is stabbed and, while Petit Paul escapes, Jean is arrested and gaoled. A year later, Jean rediscovers Marie, now with a sick baby and living with Petit Paul, who spends all their money on drink. Jean tries to support Marie, aided by a crippled woman (Marie Epstein, credited as "Mlle Marice"), who lives next door; but Petit Paul, warned by gossiping neighbours that Jean is seeing Marie, returns for a violent confrontation, this time armed with a gun. In the ensuing struggle, the crippled woman obtains the gun and kills Petit Paul. In an epilogue, we see Jean and Marie finally free to love each other, though their faces suggest that experience has taken its toll on their lives. Production and style Jean Epstein had already established himself as a film theorist with the publication of several books, and he had begun to explore his ideas in practice with his first two films, Pasteur (1922) and L'Auberge rouge (1923). Epstein now chose to film a simple story of love and violence "to win the confidence of those, still so numerous, who believe that only the lowest melodrama can interest the public", and also in the hope of creating "a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy". He wrote the scenario in a single night. Epstein had been much impressed by Abel Gance's recently completed La Roue, and in Cœur fidèle he similarly applied rhythmic editing, overlays, close-ups, and point-of-view shots. The opening sequence establishes Marie's situation in the harbour bar through montage: we see