La caduta della casa Usher

Predictably morbid and grim, this early cinematic tribute to Poe offers some interesting images and beautifully haunting music. I liked the sequence showing the lace-draped coffin, as it was carried out of that cavernous room.

More stylistic than substantive, the overall effect of the film is to engender a sense of suffocating gloom, rather than to tell an interesting story. It's very much like what one would expect in a nightmare. Space seems strung-out. People are not quite real. Pacing is so slow as to render time suspended between two swings of the clock pendulum.

I don't recall a film that conveyed such an overwhelming sense of introverted bleakness, oppression, and ubiquitous death. Even the trees were dead.

A lot of viewers will find this film lifeless ... so to speak. But for those interested in the antiquity of the occult, or Poe in particular, this film will excite like no other.

This memorable adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is particularly impressive in its use of visuals and in the macabre, disorienting atmosphere that it creates, which fits in well with the story. Jean Epstein made some rather significant changes to the story, but as a movie it all works very well.

The story changes the central relationship between Roderick and Madeline, and in so doing discards some of Poe's themes, but adds some new ones of its own. Likewise there are other differences as the story unfolds, but Epstein had his own consistent conception of the possibilities in the story, so that it's neither better nor worse than Poe's idea, just different - they are both creative and fascinating conceptions in their own way.

The settings and visual effects are very effective in establishing the atmosphere, and in setting off some of the themes of the story. Some of them, such as the enormous array of flickering candles by which Roderick works, are used as recurring images, with surprisingly haunting results. The pace with which the images come at the viewer is also used as part of the effect. It's quite a distinctive accomplishment, and it's a movie that you won't forget for a while.

I had the chance to see this film about 20 years ago and it's still quite fresh in my mind (if you knew me you'd find this very unusual). I still remember how I was wrapping myself up during the course of the film as I was feeling colder and colder - it was a summer night, mind you.

The plot sticks tightly to the original story and it shows France's affinity with Edgar Allan Poe since it was the great Charles Beaudelaire himself who translated Poe's work into French.

The film manages to create an unusual sense of discomfort unlike most classic horror films where the settings etc. result more in a feeling of (uneasy) cosiness. The insanity in Roderick Usher's face is utterly believable as well as the parts of the other characters. What tops it all up is the constant draught in the mansion. Wall hangings are steadily moving and bits of paper and dust are blowing through the corridors. Hence the above mentioned feeling of physical coldness.

All I can say is I need to see this film again and I would be grateful if anyone could point me in the right direction (Quelq'un en France, peut-etre?).

First and foremost: I love the tale of "House of Usher", regardless of which film version, and I try to encourage as many people as humanly possible to check out this haunting story of agony and Gothic damnation … So, I swear, if one more person replies me with: "Usher? … Oh, you mean the R&B singer? Yeah, he's cool", then I swear I will go Edgar Allan Poe on his/her ass! Thank you.

Admittedly I'm not much of an art connoisseur, but I reckon this silent classic is pure and genuine art! It's a stunningly beautiful, haunting, surreal and absorbing impressionistic interpretation of Poe's short story. The plot is undeniably subsequent to the atmosphere and choreography, and I actually don't recognize the storyline from the other versions I've seen. In the other versions, for example the awesome Roger Corman production starring the almighty Vincent Price, the Usher kinship is cursed and continuously being punished for the crimes committed by their evil ancestors. Here, it's actually just Sir Roderick Usher who's obsessed with painting a portrait of his lovely wife Madeleine, only … The nearer the painting comes to completion, the more his wife weakens due to a strange illness. After her death and burial service, Sir Roderick becomes increasingly mad with the restless ghost of his Madeleine still prowling through the house. The story is often confusion and open for various interpretations, but the wholesome is just downright visually stunning! Director Jean Epstein, with the more than noticeable influence of his young and upcoming assistant director Louis Buñuel, generates an atmosphere that is morbid, depressing and hypnotic from start to finish and multiple sequences are hauntingly surreal; like the funeral march and the storm. I watched the 1997 restored version, during a special film festival where there was a professional pianist providing live musical guidance, and it was one of the most culturally engaged moments of my life. Art like this will surely survive for yet another hundred years.

I've read the Poe source for this film more times than I can remember, and Epstein's film captures that story's sense of decay and degeneracy the best by far. Corman's version can't hold a candle to this film; in fact, I feel as if I'm doing a grave disservice to Epstein's work by mentioning Corman's film in the same sentence with it. Let it pass.

Although I'd read about Epstein's USHER for many years and pondered the stills, particularly of the Lady Madeline in her billowing, winding sheet, I was not at all prepared for the terrifying beauty and hypnotic delirium of this motion picture.

It's certainly not for all tastes, and, for those not particularly well-read in outre or occult literature, it will be inscrutable. But for those with an open mind and an appreciation of convulsive beauty, it's hard to find a more exquisite film.