THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928)
Special Features: Live musical accompaniment by Not So Silent Cinema
[LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER]
Along with his sister Marie, Jean Epstein was a leading light of French avant-garde filmmaking in the 1920s. This adaptation of the famous story by Edgar Allan Poe (which also incorporates parts of another, "The Oval Portrait") was co-written with Luis Buñuel (unhappy with the project, his second with Epstein, Buñuel left early, and would go on to unleash the greatest of surrealist films upon the world the following year with UN CHIEN ANDALOU). Ensconced in their crumbling manor house, wealthy madman Roderick Usher (Jean Debucourt) paints the portrait of his sickly wife Madeline (Marguerite Gance, then wife of Abel Gance, who makes a cameo appearance in the film). But as the portrait takes on an ever more lifelike appearance, Madeline's own life keeps slipping away. Poe's perverse and twisty plot is realized onscreen as a pervasive atmosphere of gothic dread and obsession, with Epstein indulging all manner of camera trickery: dream-like slow motion and double exposures, extremely skewed angles and slowly creeping pans and tracking shots. DIR/SCR/PROD Jean Epstein, from the short stories "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Oval Portrait" by Edgar Allan Poe; SCR Luis Buñuel. France, 1928, b&w, 63 min. Silent with French intertitles and English subtitles. NOT RATED
No AFI Member passes accepted.
Find more seasonal horror films in our Halloween on Screen series.
Run Time: 63 Minutes
Opening Date: Sunday, October 30, 2022
Genre: Silent horror
