In this essay, I consider the ways in which, in La Glace à trois faces (1927), Jean Epstein puts to work the complex structure of Paul Morand’s homonymous short story in order to investigate on some questions related to cinema as medium, and particularly on cinematographic narrative. Discussing two essays by the filmmaker which were published in the same year La Glace à trois faces was first screened, and analyzing crucial sequences of the film, I will then argue that Epstein uses the motif of the accident (in this case, an automobile accident) in a way that enables him to meditate on cinema as an “art of the event”.