Epstein was a filmmaker like painters of the last century were painters, depicting the world and things in a way as to illuminate them, revealing their splendor and making it visible to our sensitivity. No intention to upset or re-create a world; what he offers us loses none of its mystery except in the eyes of the ambitious or naive. This art is an approach, with the means offered by a machine, a source itself of the unknown. (…) More than a phase, Finis terræ represents a kind of liberation, a stripping of the elements that placed themselves between Epstein’s lens and life. Now the filmmaker is alone with his camera before a universe of images – and soon sound as well – before living nature. No more studio, sets, actors; no dialogues, no explanations – not the truth that is beyond us, but “approaches to truth” – a term he used to define this phase. Hence the immobile quality of a few works spread out over twenty years, from Finis terræ to Feux de la mer. They are unblemished, hard and fast in a sort of three dimensional clarity. As he approaches this universal truth, the filmmaker’s art intensifies: while the story is reduced to being nothing more than an incident or illusion, the subject’s internal meaning widens, expands, becomes drama, which is raised to a cosmic dimension.

Pierre Leprohon, Jean Epstein, Cinéma d’aujourd’hui / Seghers, Paris 1964