A stranger called Allan goes to the House of Usher. He is the sole friend of Roderick Usher, who lives in the eerie house with his sick wife Madeleine. When she dies, Roderick does not accept her death, and in the dark night, Madeleine returns.
La caída de la casa Usher, A Queda da Casa de Usher, Der Untergang des Hauses Usher, Huset Ushers Fald, Usherin talon häviö, Az Usher-ház bukása, La caduta della casa Usher, Upadek domu Usherów, A Queda da Casa Usher, Падение дома Ашеров, El hundimiento de la casa Usher, Η Πτώση του Οίκου των Άσερ, 厄舍古厦的倒塌, アッシャー家の末裔, 어셔가의 몰락
Italy
Venice Film Festival
USA
Milwaukee International Film Festival
Germany
Berlin International Film Festival
Finland
Tampere Film Festival
France
Japan
Portugal
USA
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Portugal
USA
The alchemy of melancholy. The omnipresence of loss and its pathways into futility. Not a gleam of hope, only the ashes of what remains. Pure funeral gloom.
An impressionistic adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story of the same name. Jean Epstein uses a number of techniques including slow motion and superimposition to give the film a gossamer, hypnagogic quality, conjuring up a phantasmagoria of billowing curtains, dripping candles and sinister creatures in the moonlit woods around Usher's Gothic pile.
The pictures themselves - like the tolling bell and snapping guitar strings, or the hammering of nails into Madeline's coffin - in being so vivid, already make a sound in the mind, but a special mention for Stephen Horne, who provided live musical accompaniment at the BFI screening I went to last night and really brought the film to life.
Probably would've enjoyed this more if the version I found didn't consist of a total of 2 pixels
metastasizes poe's gothica-of-the-gaps into a psychology of the fascistic urge -- the usher family becomes an incestuous family which, once it has exhausted itself entirely via culture, then destroys said culture in a mad frenzy to purge itself of its own emotional complexity -- the books of roderick usher's house fall to pieces in the stormwind, his painting burned in order to 'restore' his 'wife' to life, meanwhile the manor erupts into a volcano around them; the anxiety to preserve a set of dilapidated traditions ends up being the final nail in the coffin of said traditions. poe's original story was a tale of the non-human's intrusion onto the human soul, with the titular home sinking into the earth which birthed it, while this surrealistic take is a political fable with cosmic implications -- i cannot help but see the reichstag fire in the stardew'd immolation of this house, freud's organism of thanatos which demarcated 20th century life.
1% story and 99% vibes. In other words this is a perfect Poe adaptation. Like painting with charcoal and tears.
Poe's tale told in expressionistic shadows, much like other early avant garde/horror/mystery adaptations, this film has all the impressive visuals this subgenre is apparently known for and a compellingly told tale that is fairly clear even to one such as I who has embarrassingly never read the original.
Jean Epstein's La Chute de la maison Usher breathes the heavy breaths of a 20s horror classic: driven by the conflict between light and shadow, brought to life with expressive performances and an enchanting score of keys and horns.
This cloudy vision of Edgar Allan Poe's original material sees Roderick's only friend, Allan travel to his aid as he supports his wife Madeleine whose health is rapidly declining. Soon the story changes to one of transition, and as Roderick continues to capture Madeleine's form in romantic brush strokes, so her lifeforce shifts. Grief, pain and the horrors of loss are soon resurrected as Madeleine moves into the next realm.
But not yet.
When it became clear that director Jean Epstein…
The beauty of nature, the essence of time and space, the delicate dance of wind, water, and swaying trees, the flickering flames of candles. The human spirit, trapped in a world of chaos and destruction. Obsessive thoughts that hold us back, preventing us from moving forward. Ghosts of the past haunting the empty halls of a forgotten castle. A bride in mourning attire, awakening from a deep slumber in the realm of the dead, yearning for the light once more. But time and fate conspire against those who dare to challenge the boundaries of existence. All that remains is the haunting melody of an ancient harp, echoing through the silence of the night. A mesmerizing fluid of its own kind that no words can really capture.
A mesmerizing journey into grand fantasy and psychotic visions.
Roderick Usher, a tortured soul, struggles to grasp the truth: is Madeleine, his cherished love, lost to death—or trapped between worlds?
Expressionism at its finest. Jean Debucourt delivers an impressive mimetic performance, perfectly complemented by an eerily beautiful score.
such a haunting gem of a silent film with unbelievably palpable atmosphere charmed by the eeriness of film one hundred years gone and Poe’s text brewing to life in visual excellence. The Fall of the House of Usher is magnificent, beyond standing the test of time with grand imagery and impeccable camerawork for something so very ahead of its age, equipped with handheld shots and various close-ups that exude a pure essence of cinematic horror. gothic set pieces and phenomenal color tints/hues engulf and coat the experience in bewildering terror where double exposures and astonishing effects dwell and thrive, and with Woelfel’s score sufficiently augmenting the film with a new layer to add to the depth, House of Usher knocks…
Poe's writing serves as a morbid scaffold through which Epstein erects a tower of images, alternating in a febrile montage. A painting, a guitar, a pair of frogs. The face of actor Jean Debucourt. Coffin nails. A gnarled tree. Roderick Usher's deteriorating mind echoes through his cavernous estate and the wilderness that surrounds it, with Epstein wielding every tool at his disposal to transform that madness into cinema. You could call this "ahead of its time," but "out of time" may be truer still; with photography as visceral as this, I'd be scared to ever catch up with it.
An Edgar Allan Poe adaptation cowritten by Luis Buñuel… what took me so long to watch this?!
