The idea for 6-1/2 x 11 came from an experience that Jean Epstein's sister, the scriptwriter Marie Epstein, had when she saw a story in an image looking out at her from a developing Kodak photograph. The film's original title, Un Kodak, was changed to the dimensions of a print since Kodak refused to allow its name to be used. The plot involves two brothers, one of them a prominent doctor, who live together but are separated when the younger falls in love with a singer. News of the suicide of his brother sends the doctor to investigate; he finds Kodak negatives which tell the bitterly ironic truth. 6-1/2 x 11 is a virtuoso film of the narrative avant-garde by one of its key exponents, Epstein, who took as his heroes not people but objects: "In cinema°objects have attitudes." The film "is narrated almost entirely by images°and those images are among the first in France to be recorded on panchromatic film stock. Close-ups of objects seem tangibly luminous°long lap dissolves, superimpositions, and image deformations, all done in-camera, are marvelously assured." (Richard Abel, French Cinema: The First Wave)