Prelude

The first known work of Knight who would shortly direct Ray Milland's early features, get a co-director credit with Maurice Elvey on FOR FREEDOM and do the Elizabeth II Conronation film.

This one does manage a mood of spooky evil in it's short running time. The director plays the lead relaxing by the fire in his study and reading the Poe story which inspires a nightmare of being buried alive.

There are a few touches of style like the bowed lettering of the title being picked up with a cut to a curved mirror or the image of the interred figure outlined in the black coffin shape with the timber grain imposed. Curious as a British effort in this tradition.

A good, tinted copy survives on the Cinémathèque Française site Henri.

Mickeymousing is a real technical term in movie-making. It refers to making the music match the action on the screen precisely and it derives from when Carl Stalling was musical director for Walt Disney and did enough of it to make the term stick. The well-regarded Max Steiner (many Oscar nominations, three wins) was kown for his tendency to mickeymouse. Reportedly, while working on DARK VICTORY, Bette Davis had to go up a flight of stairs at the end, for the big dramatic finish. She paused and asked if Steiner was doing the music. "Either I'm going up these stairs, or Max Steiner is going up these stairs," she is reported as saying, "But we're not going up together."

Miss Davis went up those stairs and Max Steiner wrote the score.

In this six-and-a-half-minute short -- you knew I'd get around to it eventually, didn't you? -- Castleton Knight takes Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Minor and imagines it as a score for a movie.... and then writes and directs and stars in a movie about a man who reads Poe's "The Premature Burial" and falls asleep, to have nightmarish dreams. With sound-on-film growing popular in the US and the swankiest London movie palaces, it's a great experiment. You could have the house orchestra play the Rachmaninoff piece while this showed, or even record the Prelude on one of those discs or film tracks.

It was such an interesting experiment that within a couple of years, Walt Disney would begin his series of Silly Symphonies. He could afford it, what with the success of Mickey Mouse and to keep his musical director, Carl Stalling happy, and ultimately FANTASIA.

Prelude (1927)

*** (out of 4)

Castleton Knight directed this avante-garde short about a man who listens to a piece of music and then dreams that he is being buried alive.

This here is loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem and like a lot of films from this era, it's a mixture of horror but done in an avant garde kind of way. Other examples that would follow include two versions of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE TELL-TALE HEART.

This one here isn't quite as good as those other films but there's no question that it's worth watching and especially if you're a fan of the these types of movies. This one here works best when it shows the man being buried in what's basically a clear coffin. When then see his horror as he witnesses more and more dirt being thrown on him. These scenes were rather claustrophobic and they worked for what they are. There's even a small glimpse into Hell, which was nice.