Jean Epstein (1897–1953) was a prominent French avant-garde artist who took over the development of the concept of photogenia from the prematurely deceased Louis Delluc. The reader is presented with two Epsteins: in "Bonjour Cinema" (1921), the young, cocky, and cheerful surrealist, enamored with the new art of cinema; and the later, mature philosopher, intensely exploring the place of cinema in the psyche and making many predictions, in "The Devil's Cinema" (1947). Comparing both texts, the reader will appreciate the statement by film scholar Pierre Leprohon (1903–1993): Epstein, a rare genius, should have worked in the realm of pure abstraction, but he was "caught in the cogwheels of cinema."