La Chute de la maison Usher (1928)
Directed by Jean Epstein

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.

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...