Would you be afraid to show your teeth? To dare laugh without restraint, to react to the point of tears? What good would it serve? Your calm will also betray you: smiling belongs to women.

Claude Cahun, Aveux non avenus, 1930

A rather classic melodrama, Le Double amour was Jean Epstein’s third film for the Albatros production company, made between February and April of 1925. Like L’Affiche, Marie Epstein wrote the screenplay, and it gave full expressive power to Nathalie Lissenko, star of Montreuil’s Russian studio. She plays the part of the Countess Maresco, simultaneously a mother and a dejected woman, a great tragic and aristocratic figure around whom Camille Bardou, Pierre Batcheff and Jean Angelo gravitate, all in harmony with her collapses and laments.
Le Double amour is a film about a world of false appearances, gambling, baccarat and elegance. Dresses and suits are supplied by Drecoll and Paul Poiret. The photography is precise, and the light of the exteriors (almost all shot in Cannes) and the editing effects seem to foreshadow the filmmaker’s future poetic works, like the recurring shot of the waves that break against the rocks, an image around which the story is structured.
To quote Langlois, “just screen a reel of Cœur fidèle and a reel of Le Double amour to see Epstein’s progress. Despite his creed, he managed to integrate a human element, rid himself of the division created by the difference between the rigor and control of his own technique and the poor direction of the actors. For Epstein, Le Double Amour was not an indifferent work but a necessary one”.

Emilie Cauquy