image offered that indefinable instance of visual pleasure that Jean Epstein called

photogenie. As we saw in the introduction, for Epstein, photogenie was a uniquely

cinematic experience revealed in brief flashes. As he put it, "One runs into a brick wall

trying to define it"; for photogenie is "[t]he face of beauty, it is the taste of things" (243).

Photogenie was directly influenced by the fragmented experience of modem life, first

revealed in rail travel. The spectator could feel an intense sensation about everyday

commodities when they were in motion. The "static of unexpected feelings" (qtd. in

Chamey 287) aroused by ordinary objects on screen, Epstein argued, interrupted the

linear sequence of images temporarily. Interestingly, Epstein's example of a photogenic

moment, based on his experience of silent star Sessue Hayakawa's performance in a

scene from The Honor of His House (1918), resembles Stahr's description of the "idle"

moment in the office. Hayakawa "crosses a room quite naturally, his torso held at a slight

angle. He hands his gloves to a servant. Opens a door. Then, having gone out, closes it"

(243). As in Fitzgerald's sketch, the focus is entirely on the stuff of cinema; Hayakawa's

torso and his gloves "sweep[] the scenario aside" (Epstein 243).8 In other words, just as

the idle railway traveler could get distracted by particular objects in the passing

landscape, photogenic images allowed a curious spectator like Epstein to become

absorbed in cinema's details, ignoring its narrative situation.

 Even The Great Train Robbery, the film that made continuity the thread tying all

Hollywood films together, contains a shot acknowledging the capacity of enigmatic

images for breaking that strand. The medium close-up shot of a gunman pointing his

revolver directly at the camera (or is it at the audience?) and firing it point-blank appears

after the climactic showdown with the posse.9 What is intriguing about this final shot-a