Film Review
It is widely acknowledged that the horror genre in cinema had its
origins in German expressionism of the 1920s.
Such films as Robert Wiene's
Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (1920)
and F.W. Murnau's
Nosferatu (1922) showed how
expressionistic motifs (blocks of shadow, oblique camera angles and
atmospheric sets) could be used to arouse feelings of terror and dread
in an audience, paving the way for Universal's Gothic horror movies of
the 1930s. However, German filmmakers were not the only ones to
experiment with horror and fantasy themes in the silent era.
Another film which would prove to be highly influential came out of
France, via the unlikely collaboration between the modernist Jean
Epstein and surrealist Luis Buñuel. Their film,
La Chute de la maison Usher, was arguably cinema's first
true Gothic horror offering, one that provided the template for the
innumerable period horror films that would be made subsequently.
The film is a loose adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story
The Fall of the House of Usher.
First published in 1839, Poe's story about a decaying family in a
decaying mansion has been adapted on numerous occasions for cinema, the
best known version being Roger Corman's stylishly creepy
House of Usher (1960).
Epstein's film is not a straight adaptation of Poe's story but rather
an amalgam of several of the writer's works, including
The Oval Portrait. In Poe's
original
Usher story, the
central characters where brother and sister; Epstein changed
this to a husband and wife couple, presumably to avoid any suggestion
of incest. He also altered the ending to be more in line with
public tastes of the time.
Although Buñuel parted with Epstein (on fairly acrimonious
terms) before the film was completed, it is apparent, from its bold
surrealistic flourishes, that he had a significant impact on its
design. The slow-motion funeral sequence, which manages to appear
both haunting and comical, has a similar subversive tone to that of
Buñuel's surrealist masterpiece
Un
Chien andalou (1929). However, the expressionistic
touches which give the film its haunting dream-like feel are more
likely to be the work of Epstein, who had been greatly influenced by
early German cinema. Another influence was Abel Gance, whose
pioneering use of the close-up and superimposition in such films as
La Roue
(1923) and
Napoléon (1925) is
emulated by Epstein in this film, to great effect. Epstein
acknowledged his debt to Gance by casting his wife Marguerite in the
role of Madeleine.
As a purely visual experience and journey into the realm of unbridled fantasy,
La Chute de la maison is pretty
well unsurpassed by any other film of the silent era.
The endless tracking shots, the inspired use of superimposition and the
subjective camera, the misty and desolate exteriors and the fact that
not everything we see makes sense logically all have the same effect -
to persuade the spectator that he is experiencing a dream rather than
watching a film. One of the defining qualities of a dream is the
breakdown of time and causality, and this is skilfully replicated in
Epstein's film. The house of Usher seems to dwell in a
phantasmagoric limbo where time is a purely subjective phenomenon, to be
compressed, stretched and deformed at will. In such a place,
anything is possible.
As in Poe's novel, there is a dual relationship between the setting and
the main protagonist, the crumbling old house reflecting the inner
world of the melancholic Sir Roderick, dank, gloomy and decaying.
Just as the living portrait absorbs the life of Madeleine, so the house
appears to soak up the poison in Sir Roderick's soul, growing more evil
and more frightening by the minute. It is hard not to fall under
the hypnotic spell of
La Chute de la
maison Usher and succumb as it draws us, with delectable ease,
into the darkest precincts of our imagination. Cinema's first
serious flirtation with Gothic fantasy is also one if its darkest and
most viscerally compelling, a profoundly unsettling meditation on the
relationship between life, death and art.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Jean Epstein film:
Finis terrae (1929)
Film Synopsis
Sir Roderick Usher and his wife Madeleine lead a solitary life, living in
an ancient castle surrounded by sinister misty marshes in the most barren
and forbidding of rural landscapes. Recently, Madeleine has begun to
succumb to a strange illness, so, fearing for his wife's health, Sir Roderick
invites an old and trusted friend, Allan, to his home to comfort him in this
period of crisis. Getting to the isolated house of Usher proves to
be much harder than Allan had anticipated. For some reason, no one
seems to be willing to drive him there. It is as if the place is afflicted
with some terrible curse, and the mere mention of the name Usher is enough
to frighten away the superstitious locals.
Allan perseveres and finally he manages to find a coachman who will take
him to the grimly austere building set in the middle of nowhere. Straight
away, he sees why this place inspires such dread - the castle, the marshes,
even the air appear to be charged with a suffocating melancholy. Allan's
spirits are revived when Sir Roderick greets him with the friendliest of
receptions. Whilst his friend rests after his long journey, Sir Roderick
returns to painting his wife's portrait, which has become an obsession of
his - as it was for all of his ancestors. As the painting nears its
completion, Madeleine's state of health worsens. She becomes weak and
frail, as if the life were flowing out of her and into the portrait.
Upon the painting's completion, the unfortunate woman collapses. Her
husband is heartbroken by her physician's pronouncement that she is dead.
After the most solemn of funerals, Madeleine's mortal remains are taken to
their last resting place in the family vault, leaving Sir Roderick to mourn
her loss, although he still cannot accept she has been taken from him.
A deathly silence falls over the castle and its surroundings, and as the
hours of heavy tedium drag by the widower nervously awaits a sign that Madeleine
still lives. Then, all at once, a storm breaks and a mysterious ghostly
presence makes itself felt throughout the lonely old house. Sir Roderick's
wish is granted: Death has relented and returned his wife to him! But
this miraculous resurrection comes at a terrible price. The house of
Usher is about to come crashing down, succumbing at last to the vile malignancy
that has sheltered within its mouldering walls for so many centuries...
© James Travers
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