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Joseph Schildkraut and Roman Bohnen (both sadly forgotten today) give two brilliant performances in an updated version of Edgar Allen Poe's tale. A young man (Schildkraut) is constantly tortured mentally and physically by an old man (Roman Bohnen). Finally he kills him...but keeps hearing the old man's heart beating. Well-directed, acted and very good use of sound. Well worth catching. TCM is showing a beautiful print of this in between movies--that's probably the only way to see it. Good luck!

Trying to find a translation to the screen of Edgar Allen Poe's work that doesn't involve Roger Corman? Try this short film, made by Jules Dassin, a director who was highly regarded in his time, and is nowadays mainly remembered for Rififi. It's pretty simple: 30-year old apprentice Joseph Schildkraut kills his cruel master. But the heartbeat of the dying body will be his downfall when the police come over. What's that rhythmic ticking sound: the clock? Dripping water? Or is it...(bum bum bum) the HEARTBEAT OF A DEAD MAN?

It's a pretty slim story. The 20 minutes are just right; Dassin concentrates on atmosphere; every shot contributes to the story and mood. It's totally absorbing and gripping, depending greatly on shots from a subjective POV. Schildkraut is hypnotic as the nervous killer; it's really his movie. It might sound corny, but, as done, it's a grippingly serious short; it can be seen in between features on TCM sometimes. That, at least, is how I saw it.

This is a very good adaptation of Poe's classic story "The Tell-Tale Heart", with a good, tense atmosphere and a fine leading performance by Joseph Schildkraut. It does very well in capturing the psychology and suspense of the original.

The story is adapted just slightly from Poe's story, in redefining the relationship between the two main characters at the beginning. It was probably a good decision to do so, in that it makes the characters' motivations work better for a screen version of the story. The rest of the story sticks closely to the original, and it relies heavily on Schildkraut, who does an excellent job even while barely speaking. Roman Bohnen also does a good job in portraying the other main character.

The sound effects and visuals are used resourcefully and, in combination with Schildkraut's performance, they make for a memorable portrayal of a very troubled man. Jules Dassin deserves praise for bringing it all together so well.

The Crime Doesn't Pay series was an MGM short series that would retell some tale of crime and show how the guilty are always punished. Forget that this is not the case, the censors demanded such an ending, so that was the ending you always got. Sometimes the series would talk about career criminals, sometimes it would be an ordinary person swept up in extraordinary circumstances, thinking that they could get away with murder or larceny or some other serious crime.

This is a little different. It is an adapted dramatization of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". In Poe's story you do not know why the person telling the story has decided to kill the old man, but you do get the feeling the guy is insane because he protests so much that he isn't. The source of his malice seems to be a milky eye that the old man has, which the narrator/murderer seems to focus in on as some source of evil.

In this dramatization, Joseph Schildkraut plays a weaver's assistant who is being physically and emotionally abused by the old weaver. From the dialogue it is ascertained that Schildkraut's character came to work for him when he was 14 and never worked for anybody else - probably an orphan. So the weaver is established as a cruel person. When the assistant kills him in the middle of the night to escape his torment, he may have hidden the body well, but he didn't think through an alibi at all. He has no story for where the old man might have gone and when he is coming back, or why he might never come back. Also, the weaver lets out a scream as he is being killed which a neighbor hears and this brings the authorities the next morning.

Schildkraut shows what a fine actor that he is as he is pretty much the center of attention throughout. Recommended as a showcase for Schildkraut's acting and the fine special effects for 1941.

A 30 year old Man is the live-in worker for an old man since he was 14. The old man constantly berates him and he finally snaps. One night, he kills the old man. Then he starts to hear a constant beating from everywhere. Two men shows up looking for the old man and he starts to fall apart.

Joseph Schildkraut is pretty good as a haunted man. This MGM produced Edgar Allan Poe short is more or less a testing ground for director Jules Dassin. It takes advantage of good camera work. One can really feel the constant beating of the tell-tale heart. It's a well-made cinematic exercise.

This particular horror tale is certainly among the most filmed of Edgar Allan Poe's writings and, is one that, like "A Cask Of Amontillado" that I mentioned earlier, I first got acquainted with during my childhood days from an illustrated, abridged collection of Poe stories; I have watched a number of adaptations of it myself (both short and feature-length) and yet another, emanating from 1960, will follow presently. With a plot so familiar by now as to hold no surprises and, being a production of notoriously staid MGM, this 20-minute version is not particularly chilling – apart from the old man's blank eye. It is, however, given a stature of its own via the notable credits (sadly, it proved director Dassin's sole foray into the genre) and a superb central performance from the reptilian Joseph Schildkraut.

A much abused young man, driven to desperation & murder, hears his conscience rebel in the beating of THE TELL-TALE HEART.

Edgar Allen Poe's story is turned into a short subject gem, with the magnificent performance of Joseph Schildkraut & the inspired direction of Jules Dassin. This is a prime example of what can be done in a very limited time frame - here, 20 minutes - when inspiration & bravado are used to interpret a great story. The original has been altered & expanded somewhat to explain more fully the reasons for the murder and to create sympathy for the killer. Schildkraut's depiction of growing guilt & Dassin's creation of an oppressive atmosphere do the story more than justice.

Dassin would go on to become a celebrated features director. Schildkraut, already an Oscar winner, would enliven cinema & television roles with his talent for many years.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

This is a stunningly beautiful version of the story with exquisite black-and-white cinematography and great performances in what is pretty much a two-person film (until the end). Dassin does a superb job all around and Schildkraut is amazing. I caught this on TCM -- THANK GOD FOR TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES! This should be available on DVD!

A brilliant and stylish adaptation of the Poe story, filmed sparely, with great sound effects. Joseph Schildkraut plays the man driven mad by his evil deed, and he is magnificent. This is the way Poe ought to be done, not in the snickering, campy way he was adapted years later.

Tell-Tale Heart, The (1941)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Oscar winner Joseph Schildkraut stars in this adaptation of the Poe story. He plays the young man who murders an abusive old man but soon begins to hear his heart beating. This is my favorite story from Poe so I try and watch each version of it that I can and this here is certainly one of the best that I've seen. This was directed by Jules Daissin, who would later make Brute Force and Riffifi, so you know there's talent involved here. He does a very good job with the material and that's especially true when you watch the breakdown scene and how it's put together and edited. As the breakdown and heart beats keep pounding the director really builds up the tension. Schildkraut also does a fine job with the role as he too is responsible for building the tension up. He doesn't have too much dialogue but he doesn't need any as he really sells the character with just his looks.

ONCE AGAIN, WE have been most impressed and amazed with the wide ranging numbers subject matter and quality that has been injected into the field of the Short Subject. Most commonly viewed of these being that of the Comedies (Laurel & Hardy, 3 Stooges, Joe McDoakes, Our Gang, Pete Smith, etc.), we seem to be all too unaware of the multitude of other treasures in this category.

IN ADDITION TO their role of providing film exhibitors with inexpensive or even free fodder with which to fill out their programs, shorts also provided the studios witha sort of experimental lab. New ideas could be employed in the making of a short and up and coming and inspiring Directors could be tested and found.

THIS MAY WELL BE the case in point with the production of THE TELL TALE HEART. Director, Jules Dassin, would soon become one of the most important filmmakers of the Post World War II era. Among his output we have: BRUTE FORCE, THE NAKED CITY, THIEVES HIGHWAY and NIGHT AND THE CITY.

AS FOR THIS short film, itself, it has much to recommend it. First of all, the cast of Joseph Schildkraut, Roman Bohnen, Will Wright (uncredited) and Oscar O'Shea (ditto), was most effective in conveying the horror and eerie mood throughout. A sort of underplaying lent itself to the prevailing feelings of loneliness, isolation and frustration.

ONE OTHER QUALITY that we noticed is how the films 2 reels (20 minutes) are so skillfully used. There is naught a wasted moment nor is there any overly long presentation of any aspect of the story. In what may well have been a great coincidence, Mr. Dassin and company may well have given us a key to future productions. What we mean is that intentional or not, this production of THE TELL TALE HEART may be viewed as a sort of blueprint for the half hour television dramas that we seen so frequently over the years. Titles such as Rod Serling's THE TWILIGHT ZONE and NIGHT GALLERY, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, ONE STEP BEYOND and THE OUTER LIMITS are extreme examples of this notion.

ADAPTED FROM THE story by Edgar Allen Poe, we're sure that he would be well satisfied with the final screen product.

Joseph Schildkraut works sullenly for Roman Bohnen, who torments him. Driven past the edge, Schildkraut murders the old man and hides the corpse beneath the floorboards. He thinks he's gotten away with it, but the beating Bohnen's heart drives him mad.

It's Jules Dassin's first movie as director. He had come from the New York stage, and he went to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer because they wanted him for the studio baseball team. After working uncredited for Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin, he was given this two-reel subject, and produced a highly atmospheric short.

Dassin would go to 20th Century-Fox, and later be caught in the Blacklist; finding work in Europe, he developed a reputation with movies like RIFIFI and NEVER ON SUNDAY. He died in 2008 at the age of 96.

Many young aspiring filmmakers getting into the business are willing to work for free to learn the craft. Jules Dassin, who went on to direct several classics, offered to do just that after being in theatre as a writer and actor. His first film, October 1941 "The Tell Tale Heart," was a 20-minute short movie he directed for MGM to prove he could handle the assignment. The studio was so pleased with Dassin's work it signed him to a five-year contract.

Dassin made the switch from theatre and radio in 1940 for RKO Pictures, who was thinking he had film directing potential. To learn how to direct a movie, he was assigned to assist Garson Kanin and Alfred Hitchcock in their latest films. When RKO released him without any assignments, Dassin approached MGM, offering his services for free to show how much he learned from the two veteran directors. The studio agreed to give him a tryout by handing him a script to a 20-minute short film theaters would show before their feature picture.

Dassin's "Tell Tale Heart" was the third film adaptation on the 1843 Edgar Allan Poe story. This one differs from the others in that the murderer goes crazy after years of abuse from an old man. Joseph Schildkraut, Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner in the role of Alfred Dreyfus in 1937's "The Life of Emile Zola," plays the young man who kills the Old Man (Roman Bohnen). After the murder, the Young Man hears a constant heart beat that grates on his nerves. Dassin injects several stunning visuals as well as combines sound effects into the narrative crucial to the plot. Released shortly after Orson Welles' 1941 "Citizen Kane, Time magazine film critic Richard Corliss wrote this is "possibly the very first movie to be influenced by 'Citizen Kane.' This short film is positively in Orson Wellesian tropes: the crouching camera, the chiaroscuro lighting, the mood-deepening use of silences and sound effects." Film reviewer Steve Hutchison adds, "it's in Dassin's shadowy aesthetic, the glossy beauty of his images, that the film's horror really resides. This is a potent, interesting take on a familiar tale, elevated above the average literary adaptation because Dassin pays as much attention to Poe's psychological effects and the uncomfortable sensations of the protagonist as he does to the actual details of the story."

Dassin would go on to have a distinguished career, although his membership in the Communist Party in the 1930s complicated his life. His resume is filled with such classics as 1955 "Rififi," 1960 "Never On Sunday," and 1964 "Topkapi."

Roger Corman,although he transferred a lot of Poe's short stories to the screen ,was not really faithful to the writer:sometimes fleshed -out to a feature length film proportions by the script writers ,the movies tended to cover what original stories existed in the first place ("premature burial" )Sometimes it was a mixture of several stories ("the pit and the pendulum").Corman's works are still fun to watch though.The late sixties attempt "Histoires Extraordinaires" aka "Spirits of the dead" saw the three directors Malle,Vadim and Fellini succumb to the same vices.Only Fellini played his game well,transcending Poe with end-of-the-world pictures and a breath-taking virtuosity.

Jules Dassin's rendering of one of POe's famous short stories is a different matter ,because it deals with Poe and Poe only.If you've read the novel,you will feel this maleficent atmosphere dear to the American writer.The pictures show the influence of German expressionism with its use of shadows and light;the soundtrack,with its relentless thump makes you feel it is your own heart which is pounding.Roman Bohnen 's performance compares favorably with the best of those of Peter Lorre.Only 20 min where fear is a man's best friend.