As his beautiful young wife Madeleine dies slowly of some dread ailment, fevered artist Roderick Usher asks his old friend Allan to keep him company in these morbid times. Shortly after Allan arrives, Madeleine dies--or does she? As Roderick himself succumbs to the melancholy, noises from Madeleine's tomb cry out--Death is not the end! Working from several of Edgar Allen Poe's stories, French avant-garde visionary Jean Epstein crafted one of the most highly acclaimed and internationally renowned film adaptations of Poe. Co-directed with surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel and starring Abel Gance's wife as the undead Madeleine, this 1928 classic is a true feast for the eyes and proof positive that the German Expressionists did not have a corner on the Gothic horror market. Newly mastered from a 35mm preservation positive, with a soundtrack by acclaimed music historian Rolande de Cande adapted from medieval music.
Turn off all your lights and let yourself go. The film will draw you in. Put the story away, then get transported into its visual nightmare. Everything about the film takes part in conjuring dread, like Carl Theodore Dreyer's "Vampyr." And or sure, was this not Poe's purpose? These are films that rely on viewers with imagination. Some of the litanies in the negative reviews reveal a lack in this important respect. If you see the film in the way it is shown (not the way you think it should be shown), and if you have an imaginative capacity, you'll be led into its properly Gothic horror. And that's the charm of it. When you lessen your critical distance, you take a passage from there to an increasingly emotional involvement you won't soon forget. I for one, love this film.
December 12, 2008 |  | The Fall of the House of Usher |  |
Epstein's sterling adaptation of the well-known Poe story today remains one of the most haunting and visually adventurous horror movies of the silent era. Certainly, the film's expressionistic use of slow-motion techniques and eerie settings owes a lot to the presence of surrealist Luis Buñuel, who served as assistant director. Gance (wife of French director Abel) is radiant, too, even as a shrouded specter. With its lurid, foggy air of mystery and demented otherworldliness, "Usher" is a triumph of the gothic sensibility.
June 20, 2007| | | Fall of the House of Usher a great film ruined | |
I looked forward to receiving this film from the moment I ordered it, having a great interest in early European Cinema, particularly French and German Cinema, this was going to be a treat to behold.
I had no worries about the lack of extras, or a glossy booklet, the original French titles were enough, then I heard the voice! All of the titles and inter-titles are spoken in English, aaaahhhhhrrrrggghh! Imperialistic, cultural vandalism. This is a French film, and a silent french film at that. To watch it is like having an idiot sat behind you who talks all the way through the film, I was waiting for him to tell me the ending just before it happened. I cannot imagine the thought process that came up with this.
In summary, a great film, a visual treat, but totally ruined.
March 23, 2007| | | The avant-garde masterpiece | |
This is an amazing visual treat and an excellent adaptation of Poe's classic, at once haunting and captivating although some liberty has been taken with the story replacing the Usher sister with a wife. Special mention should be made of the haunting music score that accompanies the movie.
August 5, 2006I can't believe I'm writing a negative review of a French classic I should revere! But here are the facts. Since my childhood, I have been impressed by a still in Henri Agel's "Histoire populaire du cinéma" depicting Madeline's funeral from this film. It shows black-clad gentlemen in stove-pipe hats photographed from a distance carrying a coffin, surrounded by cathedral-like trees with the superimposed image of lighted candles adding to the solemnity. I was impressed by both the technical achievement and the atmospheric result. Unfortunately, if ever there was a film whose stills are superior to its viewing, this is it! Watching this pristine print for the first time, I was disappointed by many elements: the tampering with Poe's story (where his themes boil down to Roderick's poor choice of real estate), the imitation of Murnau's "Nosferatu" (arrival at the inn, reluctance of peasants to drive the newcomer to the estate); the expressionistic acting (it's really very, very bad); the gratuitous quirkiness (books cascading off their bookshelves, windows that stay open at all times even during a full storm, a revived woman we are expected to believe has walked a great distance and even swam a lake after waking up in a family tomb miles away from her castle, a doctor whose character or purpose is never explained, copulating frogs, an owl that may or may not be stuffed); the overwhelming feeling of boredom; the shoddy artistic direction, especially in the use of miniatures to suggest the castle and its demise, the night sky, the bogs, the fog, the storm, etc., all bad. Worst of all, perhaps, is the music on this DVD by Roland de Candé (not "Rolande de Cande" as written up everywhere) which is an unoriginal hodge-podge of borrowings from undistinguished recordings of John Fahey-like mediaeval music and electronic-sounding "madhouse" noises (probably pinched piano wires) that sound atrocious and misguided and rob the film of any gothicness, dignity or solemnity it might have preserved otherwise. "Pelléas et Mélisande", this ain't! The only way it could have been made worse, I suppose, would have been commissioning Philip Glass to write a little something (brrrr!). The film is interesting because of its historical value, its photography, editing and superimpositions, which may or may not have been daring for the time - but in 1928, I seriously doubt it. That does not make it a masterpiece and not even a film I'd like to own or watch twice.
July 26, 2005More reviews at Amazon.com ...
Daily Birthdays
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