Epstein, Marie

(1899-1995)

   Director and screenwriter. Marie-Antoinette Epstein was born in Warsaw, and later immigrated to France with her family. She got her start in film writing screenplays for her brother, Jean Epstein. She wrote the screenplays for the films Coeur fidèle (1923), Le Double amour (1926), and Six et demi onze (1927). She also acted in Coeur fidèle (1923).

   Epstein then went to work for director Jean Benoît-Lévy, for whom she also wrote screenplays and codirected. Films on which she collaborated with Benoît-Lévy include Il était une fois trios amis (1928), Peau de pêche (1929), Âmes d'enfants (1929), Coeur de Paris (1931), La Maternelle (1933), Itto (1934), Hélène (1936), La Mort du cygne (1937), Le Feu de paille (1940), Le Poignard (1952), and Agence matrimoniale (1952). She was one of the founders, along with Henri Langlois, of the Cinémathèque française, and in 1953, she gave up filmmaking in order to devote her energies to film preservation and archiving at the Cinémathèque.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins