Filmmaker Jean Epstein and his cameraman Paul Guichard made their way to the Etna on June 22, 1923. This was merely five days after the eruption started.

“Sicily! The night had a thousand eyes. All sorts of smells shrieked at once. An unfurled coil of wire brought our car, swathed in moonlight as if surrounded by mosquito netting, to a halt. It was hot. Impatient, the drivers broke off singing the most beautiful love song, striking the car with a monkey wrench and insulting Christ and his mother with a blind faith in their efficacy. In front of us: Etna, the great actor who bursts onto the stage two or three times each century, whose tragic extravagances I had arrived to film. An entire side of the mountain was a blazing spectacle. The conflagration reached up to the reddened corners of the sky. From a distance of twenty kilometers, the rumbling at times seemed to be a triumphal reception heard from afar, as if a thousand hands were applauding in an immense ovation.”

– Jean Epstein, Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna (1926) (via)

A favourite horror film adapted from a book or short story*

“Everything in this masterpiece contributes to its unity: the absolute mastery of editing and rhythm; slow motion, superimpositions, tracking shots, the mobile camera all play their roles and never gratuitously. The photographic quality, worthy of the most learned German operators, the lighting of the sets which envelops them in mystery, the sets themselves, neither realistic nor stylized, but as if sketched; the acting neither realistic nor expressionist, and yet adapted to the fantastic, to the violence; to the pauses; to the blur.”

– Henri Langlois, via

A groundbreaking expressionist interpretation of Poe's inner horrors. Many of the tropes so common in later horror films, are fully fledged and present here.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.