Monday, March 14, 2011

The Fall of the House of Usher, 1928




"Psychadelic at times, this unusual and memorable movie version of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" has some creative details, and although it is one of the more obscure versions of the story, it offers a distinctive look at a couple of its many interesting aspects. The style is deliberately murky, and it has not so much as an inter-title, so that you do need to know at least the basic plot in order to understand what is happening. Check out the Jean Epstein version, too (also 1928).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018873/"

From the Internet Archive

2 comments:

Qaliqo said...

okay, now i'm no poe expert, nor a fil historian, and the name is not up for dispute, so i may have this totally wrong, but...
i'm pretty sure the camera operator, if not the director, were shooting the tell tale heart and not, as the title suggests, fall of the house of usher. it is rather psychedelic, but the him going mad from the beating heart is clearly depicted, and that's, you know, the referent of the one poem's title...

mwilliams1220 said...

Perhaps. This is literature, therefore open to all sorts of interpretation.

However, what I think you are seeing is Poe's overlapping of themes: premature burial, anguished guilt, and (of course)madness. I would look forward to chance to explore this further, or anything else (have you ever seen Tommy?) sometime soon.